Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Trim, I am a sailor and navigator, not a smooth-tongued diplomat! We have been insulted, our flag and our navy are dishonoured, this man is a veritable poltroon!’

  And we will be prisoners of war if we are not very careful, Trim thought to himself, though he knew not to argue with his master when his mind was made up. It was the very stubbornness of nature that made M.F. who he was.

  Several French officers arrived and asked Matthew Flinders to accompany them to the port offices. Trim, of course, was not permitted to go along and would later only hear his master’s version of what had occurred. As the Frenchmen spoke very little English and Matthew Flinders not even a smidgin of French, even having trouble getting his tongue around the word ‘monsieur’, Trim expected that there might be some misunderstanding.

  ‘They kept asking me if I knew of the voyage of some Englishman named Monsieur Flinedare and I answered them earnestly and honestly that I did not. They seemed most agitated with my denial,’ he later told Trim.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Trim thought and even though his French was no better than his master’s, he was not in the cantankerous frame of mind that allowed Mr Flinders’ intuition to miss the obvious, that Flinedare was the French pronunciation of Flinders. By denying his own existence, the French immediately smelled a rat. By travelling incognito, Captain Flinders was trying to pass himself off as someone else. Furthermore he refused to show his passport to anyone but the captain general, who was also the governor. The French knew that Flinders commanded a British warship named the Investigator but now he arrived in a leaky tub named the Cumberland. Matthew Flinders must think them fools and it was easy enough, in the climate of war where sensible conclusion is in very short supply, to erroneously deduce that the English captain must be a spy.

  Trim worked all this out in a matter of a few seconds, though his master, despite his acknowledged intelligence, had got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick. Trim was in a state of despair and realised they were in a great deal of trouble. Trying to make fools of the French was a serious miscalculation and he knew they would not forgive the arrogant English captain in a hurry.

  Finally a message was sent that Governor de Caen would grant him an interview. ‘About time!’ Matthew Flinders said, buckling on his sword, ‘I had begun to think that the French must be quite devoid of sensibility, Master Trim.’

  ‘Do be careful, sir,’ Trim meowed. ‘Tread softly with a cat’s paws, do not put your big, clumsy seaman’s boot in it, I smell a rat.’

  Once again, Trim proved to be right. When Matthew Flinders was finally admitted to an interview, Governor de Caen demanded through an interpreter that the great navigator and explorer show him his French passport and also the articles of his commission as an officer in the British navy.

  Matthew Flinders, who had already adopted a somewhat recalcitrant attitude, was now incensed, for he held his honour precious. After a terse exchange the Frenchman lost his temper and shouted, ‘You are imposing on me, sir!’

  Matthew Flinders was led away. The ship’s master, Mr Aken, and Trim were fetched from the ship and it was supposed that they would be taken to the gaol. Trim’s master was quite unrepentant, boldly declaring on the way to their incarceration, ‘The captain general’s conduct must alter very much before I should pay him a second visit.’ It seemed to Trim that de Caen was in the box seat and not the other way around. While Trim gave his master tribute as a man who loved charts and instruments and the lay of land, depths and sightings, he was forced to conclude that he was not always of sound judgement when it came to mankind.

  Gaol turned out to be the Café Morengo, a lodging house that was a fair exchange for the Cumberland as it too abounded in bugs, lice and mosquitoes, whereas the food proved to be even worse than that served on the vessel. They were now under constant guard with no recourse to help, although, much to Trim’s joy, an occasion did arise when everything could conceivably be put to rights.

  The following day Governor de Caen’s aide-de-camp, a certain Monsieur Monistral, paid them a visit at the Café Morengo and asked Matthew Flinders for his orders from Governor King and extended an invitation to dine with the governor. It seemed an opportunity for a reconciliation had occurred.

  Trim could not contain his delight and did two spectacular somersaults, landing on Matthew Flinders’ lap to the consternation and surprise of the very dignified aide-de-camp. ‘Bravo!’ Trim meowed, ‘We may now undo this net of intrigue.’

  ‘Whatever has got into you, Master Trim, can you not see I am busy?’ Matthew Flinders scolded. Then, to his utter consternation, his master turned to Monsieur Monistral and hotly declined. ‘You may tell your governor I shall accept his offer only when set at liberty!’

  The aide-de-camp, who was a pleasant and conciliatory man, urged Trim’s master to reconsider. Trim, his patience worn thin, scratched at his ankle and meowed, ‘Monsieur Monistral is right, do not turn this offer down!’

  ‘Trim, you are being impertinent, whatever has got into you!’ Turning to the Frenchman, he repeated, ‘Until I am at liberty, sir!’

  The governor, hearing Matthew Flinders’ hot-headed response, replied, ‘No, sir! My next invitation will come only after you are liberated!’

  And so the lines were drawn and the English and the French, in the guise of the governor of a small, inconsequential island in the Indian Ocean and the great British navigator, were at war. As Trim observed, the odds were heavily stacked against the two Englishmen and a British cat, who were taking a considerable pounding from the French big gun and would continue to do so for the next six and a half years.

  Matthew Flinders was not always an easy man to live with and now, as his depression increased, Trim became more and more concerned. Flinders became engrossed in writing letters, most of which were aimed at the villainous and duplicitous French governor, who continued to command his compliance and punished the lack of it by confiscating Flinders’ precious papers and the ship’s stores. Flinders’ imprisonment, which under other circumstances might have been only for a few days, was now indefinite. Finally, to Matthew Flinders’ humiliation, de Caen made him surrender his sword, making him officially a prisoner of war. Things were not good and Trim found himself increasingly popping through a window to avoid the guards and going for a quiet stroll just to be by himself, though at the same time feeling guilty that he was leaving his beloved master on his own.

  In April 1805 the governor, relenting a little, moved the three prisoners, Matthew Flinders, Mr Aken and Master Trim, to new quarters away from the awful Café Morengo to the Maison Despeaux, which was set in a lovely garden and was much more salubrious accommodation. It was here that he met a young gardener with the improbable name of Paul Etienne Laurent le Juge de Segrais, who took an immediate liking to Trim, who consequently introduced him to his master. To forgo the impossibility of remembering or even pronouncing his name, Flinders dubbed him Monsieur Seagrass and the two men spent many hours together discussing the plants from Terra Australis and the Far East.

  Monsieur Seagrass was to become a renowned botanist and was instrumental in establishing the splendour of the magnificent botanical gardens in the north of the island named Le Jardin de Pamplemousse, which contains a grove of palm trees brought from the Far East that flower only once in a hundred years. As they were previously unknown to European botanists, the young botanist named them Flinders’ Palm in honour of the great navigator. Matthew Flinders was never to return to plant his coconut trees as beacons to sailors in treacherous waters but Monsieur Seagrass honoured him with a tall and wonderful palm of his own.

  Trim, in his increasingly frequent adventures outside the garden prison, was not simply indulging himself but was learning the lie of the land. If Matthew Flinders refused to soften his stance towards the French governor, Trim, a far more practical thinker, decided he should take the matter into his own hands. It took him several weeks to find the governor’s reside
nce and then a great many more to ingratiate himself with the servants in the slave quarters. From there, over many weeks, he made his way through the kitchen, the first requirement if ever he was to make it deeper into the governor’s mansion. He’d won the admiration of the African cook, Eloise du Preez, a large and fearsome black lady, by emerging from the pantry on four consecutive days with a large rat in his mouth and depositing it at her feet. Needless to say, he’d caught the rats in the grain store situated in the expansive grounds and brought them into the house, emerging with great dignity from the pantry at precisely the right moment, his eyes blazing with the sincerity of a duty well done.

  Trim did not consider this reprehensible, his master was at war with a foreign nation and he saw himself as a spy behind the front lines. His ultimate aim was to win the affection of Governor de Caen’s staff and family with his tricks and his charm so that he would become a favourite with the household and eventually be brought to the attention of the governor himself. Trim was not yet sure how he would bring about the reconciliation between his master and the governor, but his rough plan was to attend the governor’s residence at certain hours and ingratiate himself to such an extent that he would provoke a curiosity as to where he went when not present. Eventually, or so Trim’s speculation went, they would send a slave to follow him, whereupon he would lead him back to his master in the Maison Despeaux. With the two men bitterly opposed to each other, but having a cat they loved common to each, it was Trim’s earnest hope that he might bring the two together. It was a ploy he had engineered often on board ship between two men who, angry with each other over some small incident, had been brought to agreement by Trim’s showing spontaneous affection for them both. Trim had yet to find a human being who, once they knew him, did not feel immediate affection for him. He was confident that Governor de Caen could be made to feel the same way.

  It must be remembered that Trim was a ship’s cat brought up in the inherent nature of the British seaman, simple and straightforward, a stranger to the ways of duplicity or cunning. In his world, men lived in close proximity and had few secrets to share. Life on board ship was a simple business and the sailors’ problems were usually of a similar nature. Therefore Trim had no knowledge of the outside world and, in particular, of a man who possessed grand ambition and illusions of greatness in the era of the all-conquering Napoleon Bonaparte, yet found himself in charge of a small and insignificant island in the Indian Ocean. A dollop of earth that in the affairs of La Belle France had less purpose than a wash of foam on its distant and forgotten shore.

  Trim knew that his master was also an ambitious man who longed to be possessed of sufficient means to live a gentleman’s life. But Matthew Flinders was prepared to work for the honours that might be bestowed upon him and expected to earn the rewards due to him by venturing further and daring more than any other man had done before him. Governor de Caen was not such a man, but rather one of great self-importance, who felt that greatness was his entitlement. The two men had nothing but ambition in common.

  And so Trim made the greatest mistake of his life when, after several months, he managed to find himself alone in the library with de Caen. Trim was quite unaware that he was already a well-known cat among the island’s better families. The fact that the famous English prisoner possessed a great affection for a cat was the subject of dinner conversation whenever the matter of the stubborn Englishman was brought up. Trim had been oft seen and described, a large black cat with a white star blaze on his chest and a similar dab of snow to his chin, with gloves to match on all four paws. The slaves at the governor’s residence also knew of the Englishman’s cat and he became affectionately known as La Treem. No other cat on the island possessed similar markings, most being of the tabby variety, so that even the governor was well aware of the existence of Trim Flinders.

  On the particular night that Trim appeared, as if an apparition, licking a snowy paw and seated on the Afghan carpet not five feet from where the governor sat alone, the Frenchman was very drunk. He had consumed two bottles of wine at dinner and was now on his fourth cognac of the night and was feeling maudlin and sorry for himself, slumped in his armchair, in appearance half asleep.

  Trim had often observed his master in a vacant and pensive mood and knew that he preferred nothing better than his leaping quietly on to his master’s lap so that he might feel the comfort of his presence without disruption of his quietude. Seeing the governor in what seemed a very similar mood, Trim thought to act in the same manner. With great dignity he had ceased cleaning his paws and with a soft meow walked three steps towards the governor before he leapt into his lap, landing so softly that it was as if a feather had fallen from the ceiling.

  But this was not how the Frenchman saw it. By nature a dangerously vindictive man, and now drunk, he observed Matthew Flinders, the hated Englishman who refused to bow to his authority, seated on the carpet not far from where he sat. He had taken the form of a cat and, in the nature of an Englishman, was calmly licking his paws before he attacked. He watched, mesmerised, as Matthew Flinders came towards him and, with a great leap that seemed to set fire to the air, landed on his lap. De Caen screamed, though the drink had muted his voice and nobody in the sleeping house heard him. He grabbed Matthew Flinders about the throat and squeezed as hard as he could, the brandy and the wine inuring him against the pain as he felt his waistcoat ripped apart and the linen of his shirt torn asunder as the devil Englishman tore at his very heart. But he was a big man and enormously strong and he held his grip on the great navigator’s neck until at last he felt the resistance gone.

  In the morning, Eloise du Preez, the black cook, found him snoring, his chest splattered with blood and his hands still around her precious rat-bringing cat, La Treem, who lay silent as if asleep in her hated master’s lap, his snowy front paws stained red and touching as if in prayer.

  Vale Trim Flinders.

  Trim was buried by one of the slaves beside a small stream where the water bubbled over rock and where slave women went to wash their clothes. Slowly the story of La Treem, the Englishman’s cat who had decided to assassinate the hated Governor de Caen when England had been at war with France, became a part of the folklore among the blacks of the island. When the now famous Paul Etienne Laurent le Juge de Segrais, or Monsieur Seagrass, now a famous botanist, was tending his marvellous botanical garden, Le Jardin de Pamplemousse, he heard the story told by one of the black gardeners and asked to be taken to the grave of the redoubtable La Treem. Here he planted the grove of Flinders’ Palms, which die after flowering and throw seedlings that will flower again in a hundred years. This year, 2002, will be the second blossoming of the clump of palms originally planted over Trim’s grave. Vale La Treem.

  2002

  The Queenie, Marion Bentson, proprietor of Kings Cross Dressers Pty Ltd, a registered travel agency, and secretary and part-owner of The Boys’ Boutique, a men’s social club in Kings Cross, and Alf Petersen, public servant and owner of the Flag Hotel, joint owner with Bentson of the travel agency and social club, were charged with importing and exporting pornography, videotaping sexual acts between adults and children and, along with Mohammed Suleman, with supplying prohibited drugs to a juvenile. They were also charged on fifteen other counts, for which a jury found there was not sufficient evidence for a conviction.

  Marion Bentson received four years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of three years, Petersen received six years for the same offences as Bentson but additionally for carnal knowledge of juveniles while in the employ of the Department of Community Services. Of the six men found on the premises of The Boys’ Boutique on the night of the raid, four were charged with aggravated indecent assault of a child on the evidence given by Mr John ‘Monkey’ Burns and supported with a videotape taken by Mr Burns on the premises, showing them indecently assaulting three under-age girls and one boy. They each received eighteen months. The other two were not charged. The six children foun
d on the premises on the night of the raid were eventually placed in foster homes. As Marcus Eisenstein had once said to Billy, ‘That is why the law is an ass, we do not even have a legal definition for a paedophile.’

  This year Ryan Sanfrancesco turned seventeen and entered the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on a scholarship. He also moved out of the home of Con and Maria Poleondakis where he had spent the past five years and nine months thoroughly indulged by the six women in Con’s entourage.

  Billy and Dorothy Flanagan were married last year in a civil ceremony and Ryan chose of his own accord to move in with them. Billy is again practising as a barrister-at-law, specialising in sexual abuse cases and the defence of juvenile offenders. He is also chairman of the newly formed Committee on Children and Young People. He hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in six years, two months and six days and he’s given up gritting his teeth because the Indian mynah birds have won and the flying shit factories are even more prolific than ever.

  In Monday’s paper, Billy’s eye caught a sevencentimetre column in the sports pages of the Telegraph:

  Davo Davies wins Lightweight Title!

  Last night, Davo ‘The Beamer Boy’ Davies won the New South Wales lightweight title from Trevor ‘Bulldog’ Wright in a fourth round knockout at the Bankstown RSL. Davies fights out of Team Fenech. Jeff Fenech claims his fighter is ready, and is the No. 1 contender, for the vacant national title to be fought in November.

  The sun is setting over Sydney Harbour and Trevor Williams and his wife Bridgit are standing on the balcony of the O’Shannessy two-bedroom apartment in Elizabeth Bay with Ryan, Billy and Dorothy. From where they are, they can see Billy’s beloved Royal Botanic Gardens, and the first of the fruit bats taking to the air. They have just returned from Rookwood Cemetery after attending the burial service held for Kartanya Williams, who died of a heroin overdose three days ago. They are drinking to Caroline’s memory with Con’s special Greek grape juice.