‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘That’s millions of record sales, awards, more money than you could ever count, girls fainting when they see you. Or does that happen when you pop to the corner shop for a bottle of milk?’
‘I’ve been chased before.’
‘No you haven’t. Billy K has.’
For the first time Mathew Quail has taken his eyes from mine. He’s diminishing in the seat, smaller by the second.
‘Don’t be too disheartened.’ I say this with the tone of a concerned, but lecturing father. ‘It wasn’t Billy K that kept one step ahead of me for two continents. It was you. Well done. I’ll give you credit for that.’
He’s looking at the door. He’s not tied or bound. I don’t have him at gunpoint. ‘You’ve got no right to keep me here.’ He knocks the chair over as he stands. ‘I’m fucking out of here.’
I let him run. I walk calmly behind. He kicks at the door twice before I hook low and sharp under his bottom rib. Mathew groans, all the air in his lungs expelled. He crumples, shrinks to the floor like a burst balloon. I haul him back to the chair by his shoulders and set him back upon it.
‘Stop crying. You’re just winded.’ I was right about tears if I hit him. ‘I need answers before you can leave.’ He’s snivelling, crying like a toddler, not a 23-year-old. ‘How about I talk while you get your breath back? All you have to do is listen, then you can decide if you want to say the right thing and leave, or whether we stay here.’ I go on a knee before him. Even crouched like this I seem bigger than my prisoner, slumped and sniffing, crying into his sleeve. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mathew. But I’ve gambled everything to find Billy K, whether he’s dead or alive. From Sydney to West London, each step you’ve taken I have too, each turn on the trail I’ve been your shadow.’
Mathew sits straighter. ‘I won’t get the money if I tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I can’t.’
‘OK. Let’s do this a different way.’ I rise from my knee.
Mathew screams, ‘Beat me up! Break my legs! I don’t fucking care. I’ll be rich and you’ll be in prison.’ He’s actually frothing at the mouth as he shouts.
‘Calm down. No need to get so excited. You should listen first. I’ll keep it really simple. Listen, because your life depends on it. Yesterday I met a man with a gun. And some bullets. One of them had my name on. The other yours.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Bullshit? Well, I’m here because he’s not. And if he was here, all you’d get is a hole in the head.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’
‘You little twat.’ I reach out and grab the scruff of his neck. I have his shirt bunched in my fist. ‘You’d already be dead if I hadn’t got to him first. Dead. Not fucking here. Do you fucking understand or not?’ I drag him off the chair. I pull him across the floorboards into the kitchen.
‘What do you see? What the fuck do you see?’ I’m pointing at a spot on the dirty lino. He’s confused, terrified. ‘What do you see?’ I’m not shouting any more.
He says, ‘Nothing.’
I let him go. Then I slump against the wall, drained, bereft at the memory of my mother in that very spot. ‘Be good,’ her very last breath.
Mathew hyperventilates as he talks. ‘Wise wouldn’t hurt me. We had a deal.’
‘Well, he made a new one.’
‘To kill me? I said I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Say what?’ I ask.
He looks up, decides I’m either too far gone to bullshit, or that the truth has become a burden for his narrow shoulders. ‘Keep Billy K alive. Keep his fans hoping. Wise set me up with the flights and fake ID. All I had to do was go out to Australia, track down the letter, you know, investigate as if I were Billy K.’
‘You stole the letter from Monique.’ He nods. ‘You have it now?’
‘I was going to give it to Wise.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and I tell him to move slowly. He hands over the crum pled pages, a barely legible scrawl.
‘Then the convict archives.’
‘And the ruin. The poem. A month later Wise would leak the story. Press would hear about a man looking like Billy K going out there, visiting the orphanage in Kenya. All that business with the reverend in the desert. That was unexpected. Freaked me out, but Wise loved it. More mystery I suppose.’
‘And more record sales. More money in his pocket. What about Billy K? Did you ask?’
‘Wise is not the kind of geezer you go demanding answers from, but yeah, I did ask.’
‘And?’ Again my skin prickles. I stand up off the wall.
‘He just smiles, says something about music never dying, even when the artist does. I asked if he knew he was dead. He said, “He died the day he stopped writing songs. The day he ran back to mummy.”’
Terra Incognita
I must write this down. I must explain, somehow, this waking and feverish dream, a vision which has possessed my very soul for the best part of the afternoon. This is what I saw and heard:
The church is complete. A crooked lintel above the entrance, two glassless windows overlooking the glaring scrub, a wooden cross fixed to the roof, and the reverend, hammering nails into the base of a broken, upturned pew. He raises the hammer, swings, misses, and strikes his thumb. He does not swear, but grits the curse between his teeth. A pregnant aborigine, more girl than woman, stands at the door. When the priest sees her, he waves her away and bellows he is busy. Overweight and sweating in the heat, frustrated at the menial task beyond his ability, he strikes the nail with such anger and ferocity he splits the seat.
‘Having a spot of bother there, reverend?’ A male voice calls from outside.
‘Jesus.’ The reverend drops the hammer in shock. ‘McCreedy! You jumped me from my bones.’
‘You want some advice on hammering a nail?’ The voice is a silhouette, a shadow on the dazzle beyond the doorway. ‘You should ask a Roman.’
‘Not stopped your blaspheming then.’ The reverend stands, straining.
The two men are similar height and shape, though the mass of McCreedy is the muscle of labour and toil, unlike the reverend, a man bloated on sitting and eating.
‘Come out of the sun, now,’ directs the reverend.
The aboriginal elder with McCreedy does not approach. Instead he turns and walks to the stand of gum trees. He folds his legs and sits down in the shade, staring beyond the little church as if it were not even there. McCreedy takes off his hat, kicks the dirt from his boots against the doorframe, and enters.
‘Well, sit. Sit down, man.’ The reverend directs McCreedy to a pew. ‘And tell me it was a day the devil lost.’
McCreedy is dusted with red sand. His lips are cracked and peeling, the handkerchief around his neck soaked with sweat. And despite the journey here, his weary limbs and nights beneath the stars, he does not sit.
‘Oh yes, reverend,’ he confirms. ‘A day the devil lost.’
The news seems to make the reverend stand a little taller. ‘Dearest McCreedy,’ he says with a smile of relief. ‘The good Lord does not let such deeds pass without reward. And though blood was spilled, and the earth reddened by a commandment broken, forgiveness is close when the act itself was willed by our Heavenly Father.’
Again, the reverend offers McCreedy a pew, fussing until he takes a seat.
‘Was it not Providence that brought the stockmen through our lonely parish, that they delivered news of Mr Babbage and his arrival to these shores? To think that he dare venture a return to England with the audacity of seeking an audience with Queen Victoria herself. That he was journeying into the heart of our kingdom to plead that Britain and the Mission Society leave Fiji, his hell-pit of cannibals and debauchers, to its own devices. We gave this man the power of our language, and he uses it to deny and sabotage the word of the Lord, the light upon his land.’
The reverend takes a blackened handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his forehead and neck.
‘Now what would the Lord think of us, or of any good Christian man, who would hold open the door of his house and let Satan walk right in? This was your calling, McCreedy, a chance to redeem your sins in the name of God.’
‘To be forgiven for my crimes. To be a good man, like yourself, reverend.’
‘A drink, McCreedy. Water?’ The reverend stands and shuffles, uncomfortable with the virtues of piety pressed upon him. ‘Or something to take the edge off the journey?’
‘Rum,’ answers McCreedy. Not for one moment has he taken his eyes from the reverend.
‘Now then, where did I put that key?’ The reverend is patting down his frock and rummaging in the pockets. ‘Ah, of course.’ He pulls out two necklaces from his chest. On one dangles the silver cross, the other a small key. He moves behind the pulpit, bends and unlocks the door. ‘Only hidden to protect our heathen subjects from temptation. Will port suffice?’ Next to the flask are a bible, a muslin bag of moulding cheese, a musket, and a small bag of shot.
McCreedy takes the flask without a word. He unhinges the stopper and gulps.
‘Steady now,’ warns the reverend. ‘I want the story from a sober narrator.’
McCreedy wipes the rum from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You having some yourself?’
‘A little early in the day for me.’
‘I think you should have a drop.’
A look of panic flashes across the reverend’s face. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he demands. ‘And stop this fooling.’
The reverend does not take the offered flask, and McCreedy, smiling, knowing, takes another gulp.
‘You did kill him, didn’t you?’ The reverend’s question hangs in the stifling heat. McCreedy finishes the flask and tosses it across the plank floor of the church.
‘With a dirty blade.’
The reverend is both pleased and puzzled by the admission. He frowns at first, and then breathes a sigh of relief, an understanding that his only trouble is the guilt of his assassin. He sits on the raised stage of the chapel and faces the murderer he hired with the promise of redemption, not pots of silver or gold.
‘Now, McCreedy. A sinner you may have been, and delivered here in manacles at the request of the Crown for good reason. But the Lord knows His earth is a brighter place without that cannibal darkening our days. He may have paraded himself as a Christian at one time, and I admit we were fools to believe we could turn a savage to the light so soon, but contend not that this was a man sly to the point of sorcery.’
McCreedy takes his canvas pack from the plank floor and sets it down beside him on the pew. He unfastens the straps and reaches in and pulls out the leather journal of the Fijian.
‘Seen this before, reverend?’
The revelation of what events and commentary may be recorded takes the breath from the reverend’s speech. He stutters and stammers. ‘The journal! From the voyage out there to …’
The reverend stretches out to clutch the book, but McCreedy hovers the prize just beyond his reach.
‘McCreedy!’ shouts the reverend. ‘Give it here now.’
McCreedy lets the reverend snatch the carrot from the stick. The reverend pulls the book to his chest, as if it were his beating heart, and he would surely perish if anyone remove it from his person.
‘For once, McCreedy, your ignorance of the written word has done you a favour. Consider it a blessing that such satanic scribblings have kept their tongue.’
The reverend allows the book to leave his chest. He begins to turn over the cover, then quickly snaps it shut.
‘Will you join me in a prayer, McCreedy? Some words to thank the Lord for the safe return of this burning book. And of course the health of your good self.’
McCreedy suggests that the reverend first hear of what happened. ‘The tawdry details, reverend, they are a burden I have to share.’
‘Tell, tell all. Should we not revel in an evil banished?’
‘After I went to the guest house. After I hid in his room and observed him readying himself for the evening. After a man you pronounced as a flesh-eating banshee fought me tooth and claw for his life, I needed comfort beyond prayer, a physical embrace frowned upon by our Lord.’
‘You took solace in a whore.’
‘That I did, reverend.’
‘What does that tell us of flesh and loneliness? That a brave man on a mission of the Lord has to seek refuge in the arms of a poor and stupid girl.’
‘Well, reverend. This “stupid” girl could read.’
The reverend sputters for breath. His jaw hangs and trembles at the news that the words clutched to his chest may have spread their wings.
‘And tell me a story this whore did.’
‘Lies, lies. All lies.’ The reverend jumps to his feet, spitting forth his innocence, how the cunning take league with the devil, that this is a test of the righteous and the good, a test for the soul of McCreedy. He is shaking the journal back and forth as though he were before his flock on a Sunday morning.
‘Come now, reverend.’ McCreedy stands and steps towards the reverend. The plank flooring of the church rattles with the shuffling, sidestepping reverend, and the steady advance of McCreedy.
‘It may be about you, reverend, but that doesn’t mean it belongs to you.’
The reverend is backed on to the raised stage. He puts a hand on the pulpit to steady himself, but both he and the stand topple. The bible, pistol, and the bag of shot spill across the floor. The ammunition rolls away like scattered marbles. The reverend scrabbles for the pistol, grasps the stock and quickly, shakily, aims it at McCreedy.
‘Now, now, reverend.’
‘Cast you under a spell he has. The devil’s poetry, I tell you.’ The reverend stands, quivering with the pistol. He does not take his finger off the trigger, nor the bead from McCreedy.
‘Reverend, you told me I was a sinner long before, that I had to redeem myself in the name of the Lord by doing his work, that you could help me help myself. I gave you my blood and sweat building this church. I gave you my darkened soul in the belief you could bring me to the light. And you told me the Lord wanted murder, that I was to go away and despatch the devil incarnate from this good earth.’
‘A cannibal he was. A flesh-eater, for ever corrupt before our Lord.’
‘He was a gentleman in a suit. You know what he was doing before I twisted the blade? Polishing his shoes, buffing them to a mirrored shine before his evening engagement with the other diners in the restaurant. And do you know what, reverend? I doubt human flesh was on the menu that night.’
‘A wolf. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.’
McCreedy looks beyond the barrel of the pistol at the reverend. He is studying the shaking hand, the sweat dripping from his face, and the cold stones of his eyes. He knows now that everything in the journal of Nelson Babbage is fact, not fiction, not the work of the devil.
‘You know what else, reverend? I think that frock of yours is made of wool.’
Now the reverend composes himself. He steadies his shaking arm, the pistol. ‘Forgive me, Father,’ he prays without bowing his head or lifting his eyes from McCreedy, no distance between them but the end of the barrel, ‘for I have sinned’.
Then the reverend fires the pistol into the face of McCreedy. But McCreedy is smiling, even after the reverend has pulled the trigger. He is smiling because he knew there was no shot in the chamber. The powder flares and hisses, a flame spurts from the flint. It burns the reverend and he drops the pistol to the floor. He swings back his fist to strike, but McCreedy sways and yanks him to the floor by his sleeve. The reverend kicks out, catching the broken pew. The hammer clatters on to the planks. McCreedy has one hand on the dog collar, twisting the material bunched in his fist, slowly garrotting the reverend. With his other hand he picks up the hammer and raises it high above his shoulder and shows the reverend how to strike a nail correctly by splitting open his skull with a single blow.
When McCreedy came out of the
church he was dressed in the clothes of the reverend. He paused and fixed the collar, then turned and dragged out the naked body. The aborigine beneath the gum tree had still not moved, but the pregnant girl now stood next to him. They watched McCreedy pull the pale dead flesh of the reverend by his heels across the sand and towards the creek. His broken head left a stain on the dirt, but not for long. Quickly the sun dried the blood and brain before the gusting wind swept his life into the sky. And now the man beneath the gum tree moved. He undid a small bag tied by a loop of twine to his waist and spread its contents before him on the ground. He put a narrow stick between his palms and twisted the sharpened end back and forth on to a strip of bark. When it smoked he added dried grass and blew. Tiny flames flickered from the embers. He quickly added larger twigs and dried roots until the fire was large enough to burn a branch end that he could carry like a torch into the darkened church.
After McCreedy had laid out the corpse of the reverend in the bushes beside the creek, he walked back to the side of the church and picked up the shovel. Smoke was already billowing from the glassless windows but he did not stop to investigate. He returned to the body and began digging. The grave site was exactly where it had been in my dream two days before. And then I saw myself clothed and broken, watching McCreedy in the clothes of the reverend, tossing dirt into a mound and digging deeper. My other self was oblivious to my presence.
And just as before, McCreedy lifted the cross from his neck and placed it upon the deceased. Again, the body and the dirt did not make a sound when dropped into the earth.
When McCreedy finished shovelling he turned and headed back towards the burning church. But after a few paces he stopped, patted the chest pocket, and reached in and took out a piece of paper. He unfolded the ticket and held it level with his face. It was in the name of a Reverend Thomas. But he could only presume this. He only knew it was a ticket because printed on it was a picture of a steamer with a puffing funnel, stencilled passengers waving from the open decks. To read the destination he put his fingers to the word and sounded out each letter. ‘A-F-R-I-C-A … Af … Af-ri … Africa.’
Show Me The Sky Page 21