Long Gone the Corroboree

by Tony Parsons

  As the boy drew closer to the house, Steele rose from his chair and went down the steps to meet him. He put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and received in turn a dazzling smile. “Gillian, I’d like you to meet Billy Sanders,” he said.

  Billy shook hands with me and said he was pleased to meet me. He had a very pleasant voice with a manner to match, and he impressed me from the outset. He strode into the house and in a short time returned, dressed in faded blue shorts and a red shirt. Meanwhile, Steele made a sandwich and poured Billy a glass of milk.

  “We haven’t long had scones but would you like something now, Gillian? Since my illness, I’ve mostly been drinking fruit and vegetable juices but I have tea and coffee.”

  “I’d love a coffee,” I said. “Milk and one sugar.” It was a good excuse to stay close to Billy, who intrigued me almost as much as Steele. It was quite apparent that Billy and Steele were very close.

  “Gillian’s from Sydney, Billy. She’s going to stay in the van tonight. I’ve asked Mrs Butler to come and have dinner with us.”

  Billy nodded while he tucked into his sandwich. He had white teeth and looked a picture of health. So, this was Billy Sanders, the boy who’d created such a great impression at the Tamworth Music Festival: the son of Lilly Sanders who was so desirable that men fought over her and as a result, had wound up in a wheelchair.

  “Anything exciting happen at school today?” Steele asked.

  “A girl asked me for my autograph,” Billy said with a grin.

  “Did you give it to her?”

  “I didn’t, Mr Clay. She wanted me to write it on her knickers. I thought I’d get into serious trouble if I did that,” Billy said, and winked.

  “Good heavens,” I burbled. Was this boy for real?

  “Well done, Billy. You could have been in big trouble if you’d done as she asked,” Steele said.

  “You bet. She wanted to take them off so I could do it,” Billy said. “What do you do, Miss Brooker?”

  “Gillian, please, Billy. I’m a journalist. A writer. At least, that’s what I trained to be. I don’t write books like Clay, though I’d like to. I used to write for a newspaper,” I said.

  “Gillian actually came up here to find me so she could tell the world where I’ve been hiding. What do we do with her? Bump her off and bury her alongside Jack Hewitt?” Steele looked across at Billy with a grin.

  “She’s too pretty to bump off, Mr Clay,” Billy said with an answering smirk.

  “Thank you, Billy. You’re a real mate,” I said. What a great boy, I thought. It was hard to imagine he’d had such a traumatic past.

  “Billy taught me to play the guitar, Gillian,” Steele said. “Well, he gave me my first lessons. You’ll hear him later. Billy, do you have any homework?”

  “Some, Mr Clay,” Billy said with a grimace.

  “Need any help?”

  “I could use some help on the English stuff.”

  I looked at Clay and then back at Billy. “Could I help, Billy? Clay might like to get started on dinner. Especially, as he has a guest coming.”

  Billy looked at Steele who nodded. “Perhaps you could,” he said. “I’ll get started on dinner. Glenda likes a nice meal.”

  “I suppose I really should be helping you.”

  “You’ll be helping me by helping Billy.”

  I stayed with Billy for perhaps an hour before joining Clay in the kitchen where I found dinner preparations well-advanced. There was a steak stitched into a roll and stuffed with onions, tiny tomatoes and some kind of aromatic herb mixture. There was a bowl of small creamy-skinned potatoes set ready to boil in their jackets and green beans ready to steam. For dessert, Clay had sliced rockmelon and drizzled passionfruit on top.

  “You sure know your way around the kitchen,” I said.

  “Trial and error combined with the necessity that both Billy and I need to have good food. I’m teaching him to be handy in the kitchen too, and he’s coming along quite well. And there’s nothing exotic here. It’s just good plain food,” he said. “Glenda usually brings a bottle of wine. I seldom drink beer or wine but Glenda likes wine with her dinner. It helps her relax after a day in court.”

  When we were in the kitchen getting dinner ready, I asked Clay how he’d describe the magistrate and he told me that initially, I might find her a little bossy, but that she was really very nice. If she gave the impression that she was a mite autocratic, this was only to be expected from a woman who’d made countless legal decisions. Steele said that he had sometimes accused her of being ‘too magisterial’ and she’d always taken it in good humour.

  When she arrived, I pegged Glenda Butler at being around forty. She was an impressive woman physically and it was obvious that as a younger woman, she’d have been a stunner. She was tall and statuesque, with lovely hair and clear grey eyes. I was soon to learn that she still worked out in a gym, which didn’t surprise me, as she certainly looked fit and rather athletic. Whatever her age, Glenda Butler was the kind of woman who would always attract attention.

  It didn’t take me long to appreciate the fact that despite the difference in their ages, somewhere along the line, Clay and Glenda had had something going between them. I’d been well-trained to observe the subtle nuances of human behaviour and I soon picked up on the glances that passed between the pair. It was quite obvious that they were very good friends, but there was something deeper than that: there was great respect for each other’s point of view. Each listened very attentively when the other spoke. I suppose, I was more than ordinarily sensitive to their behaviour because I was becoming more than a little interested in Clayton Steele myself. What I also ascertained from that evening was that Clay had a very nice singing voice and was an accomplished guitarist. He’d studied in town with Billy’s music teacher and had made huge strides musically. In fact, it was amazing how far Steele had come music-wise in three short years. Granted he was supposed to be very intellectual, but the fact was that until Billy came into his life, he’d never played a note of music. Now, he could play the guitar, read music and play the piano reasonably well. The latter piece of information came from Glenda. Steele’s voice – I mean his singing voice – had been recognised in his teens but he’d seldom used it. While at university, he’d been roped in to sing the male lead in ‘South Pacific’ and I reckon he’d have wowed his audience on that occasion. But to Steele, writing was more important than singing and he’d literally sung no more from that time. It was Billy’s advent that had induced Steele to use his voice again. It was really something to hear Clay and Billy singing together, nor was that all because I discovered that Glenda sang too. She had a strong though pleasant mezzo voice that harmonised well with Steele and Billy when the trio sang ‘No More Corroboree’. It was so inspiring that I wanted to join in and be part of it. I only refrained from doing so for fear of spoiling their performance. They went on to sing more songs, some written by Clay and some by Billy. Clay and Billy both played guitars and the empathy between them was almost tangible. And Glenda, the magisterial Glenda, was wonderful, too.

  If I live to be an old, old woman, I shall never forget that night. Between the various songs, I heard what Clay said were grey possums – a variety peculiar to Queensland – chirruping almost like birds from the trees in the moonlit garden. The overwhelming impression I gained from that evening was of the way those three people, albeit separated widely by age, sang together and so obviously enjoyed each other’s company. I’d never experienced or been part of anything quite like it. True, I’d had reasonably close friends at university but it seemed to me that we’d never had anything like the bond between us which existed between Clay, Glenda and Billy.

  Before she left that night, I asked Glenda if I could call and see her at her convenience. I had no rigid schedule nor had I any need to return to Sydney by any particular date, so my time was my own. Glenda said she could see me in two days’ time and I told her that would suit me fine. She asked if I was fixed up for accommodation
and I told her I was using Clay’s van. She thereupon told me that she had spare rooms if I’d prefer a better class of accommodation. I thanked her and said that I might take up her offer for a night before I went back to Sydney. In the meantime, I wanted more time with Clay as there was still much I wanted to know about his decision to stay out of the public eye. His wasn’t the behaviour of many top-line writers, most of whom actively sought publicity to generate greater book sales.

  Glenda nodded and told me that her daughter would be home from university at the weekend and that I’d meet her if I stayed on Saturday night. I must confess that the thought of meeting the girl, who at seventeen had been in love with Clay, was a powerful inducement for me to accept Glenda’s invitation. I was hugely curious about how Clay had handled that situation. “I’d love to come… and stay the night,” I said. “But I’d still like to talk to you privately.”

  So, we made a time for me to call on her in her chambers. I wanted to get it clear in my head just where Glenda fitted into Clay’s life. They could be good friends and nothing more, but I wasn’t convinced that that was the case. And my desire to know wasn’t entirely limited to filling in the details of the enigmatic writer’s missing years. There was something about the man himself that made me want to know more about him. A lot more.

  After Glenda left, Clay told me that I could stay as long as I liked. He said that I’d probably find it a quiet, even dull, place with nothing much that would be of great interest for a city-reared young woman, despite my interest in environmental issues. My view was that it could never be boring with Clay in the vicinity and when Billy joined him to work on a song, I was happy to simply sit close by and listen to them.

  I asked Clay if he thought it would be all right for me to have a visit with Billy’s mother. It seemed a pity not to because not only was she close by, but it seemed that Billy had inherited his musical ability from her. An interview with Lilly Sanders could prove valuable if I wrote an article about Billy. Clay said that he’d take me up there and then leave me with Lilly and Tess so I could stay as long as it suited me, as long as it was okay with Lilly. This seemed a good arrangement as it would leave Clay free to return to his writing.

  Lilly agreed to see me and Clay took me to her after lunch the following day. We walked up the road to Lilly’s small farm which adjoined Clay’s Jerogeree property. The farm ran a small herd of mixed breed cows with a fenced off area of young avocado and mango trees growing well in the rich red soil.

  “Lilly, I’ll leave Gillian with you and she can come back to me when it suits her,” Clay said.

  “Okay, Mr Clay,” Lilly said. “We’ll look after her.”

  Lilly, confined as she was to a wheelchair, couldn’t do much looking after and depended on her cousin, Tess, for just about everything. Tess was a large woman of about forty who I soon learned had experienced a fairly awful marriage with an alcoholic husband who’d finally done her a good turn by dying. She was darker complexioned than Lilly and had nothing like her looks but she appeared to be a capable person and a very good cook to boot.

  Lilly was an eye-opener. Of course, I couldn’t tell what she’d been like before she’d been laid low by the man who’d been living with her, but I saw enough to tell me that she’d been nothing less than beautiful. Despite her trauma, she was still a good-looking woman with a personality that often sparkled but was never less than bright. And her language was frequently quite scandalous.

  “So, how you getting on with Mr Clay?” Lilly asked me by way of beginning our conversation.

  “Very well. Mr Steele is a nice man,” I said. “And it’s simply wonderful how well he and Billy get on together.” So, I told her about them and Glenda singing together the previous night. “Mr Steele says that Billy has inherited his musical ability from you. He said you should have had a career as a country music singer.”

  “I suppose I could have. I was a bit too keen on boys and then men. And they were too keen on me. Have you got a fella?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t have a fella. I’ve never met one I liked well enough to want to keep permanently.”

  “What about Mr Clay? You wouldn’t get anyone better than him, would you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know him well enough to answer that. I only met him yesterday. You’d have a better idea than me as you’ve known him far longer.”

  “As far as a man goes, he’s the best I’ve ever known but what he’s like in bed, I wouldn’t know. He knocked me back when I tried to thank him for what he’d done for Billy,” she said brashly.

  “Oh, did he?” I stuttered.

  “Yes, he did. So, he’s different from most men. I never had any other man knock me back. He said he’d been very sick and went to America to get fixed up. Maybe that wrecked him down below,” she said.

  Maybe she was right and maybe she wasn’t. I recalled the way Glenda looked at Steele and it seemed to me that it wasn’t the kind of look usually bestowed on a dud lover. “Mr Clay ought to go for you,” Lilly said. “You look as if you’ve got good boobs. You should let him have a better look at them.”

  I took a deep breath before I answered the forthright Lilly Sanders. “I didn’t come up here to have a romance with Mr Steele, merely to find him and maybe do a story about him. He’s been out of circulation for some time and there’s been a lot of speculation about his whereabouts, especially in literary circles. And I don’t think he’s the kind of man who’d be influenced by boobs,” I said.

  “I’ve never known one who wasn’t, but I suppose there’s always a first time for everything. Outside the God-botherers, I didn’t think there was a man alive like Mr Clay. I hope Billy appreciates all he’s done for him and doesn’t waste his life like I did. I can see now that what Mr Clay says is true: talent alone isn’t enough. You need to have ambition, too. I didn’t have any ambition beyond the next fella,” Lilly said. She looked up as Tess came into the room.

  “Tea’s ready,” Tess announced. She stood by as Lilly manoeuvred her chair round and then pushed it out to the kitchen where afternoon tea was set out. There were Anzac biscuits, jam drops and scones with jam and cream.

  “This looks delicious,” I said.

  “Tess made everything. She spoils me rotten. Gives me massages, too. Her mongrel of a husband used to belt the tripe out of her when he was on the booze. You’d wonder why we bother with men yet we still chase after them. Mad, that’s what we are. Think we can’t live without them. Well, they’ve got their uses and you can’t get around that,” Lilly said. She munched away at a scone while taking stock of my reaction.

  “Nice scones,” I murmured. “Real cow’s cream.”

  “No good living on a farm and not having your own cream,” Lilly said. “I send some down to Mr Clay so he and Billy can have it with their scones. He makes his own scones, you know?” she said.

  “Yes, I’ve sampled them.”

  “You should try and sample Mr Clay while you’re there. It would do him a lot of good. The poor bugger needs a break from all that writing. It’s not as if he doesn’t know what to do; he had a sexy girlfriend before he went to America,” Lilly said.

  Lilly seemed well informed about Steele which surprised me as he’d told me he’d had very little to do with her, and I decided that she’d likely gathered most of her information about him from Billy.

  As soon as it was decently possible to leave, I made my departure. Lilly was entertaining in a crude sort of way but she wasn’t well stocked with brainpower. She evidently had natural musical ability but she hadn’t been disposed to let me hear any of it. For all her shortcomings, I had no doubt she was a very kind person. She instructed Tess to load a basket of goodies for me to take back to Steele… biscuits, cream, milk and eggs.

  “Billy eats a lot,” she said by way of explanation.

  I said goodbye and that I hoped I’d see her again but in truth, I had no desire to do so.

  “Don’t forget what I said. Let Mr Clay have a better look
at your boobs,” she said with a wicked smile. With this piece of advice ringing in my ears, I walked back down the road to Steele’s place.

  “How did it go?” he asked as I handed him the basket of goodies.

  “Entertaining but a bit short on substance. Earthy,” I said.

  “I can imagine. Did she sing for you?”

  “Not a note.”

  “Pity. She has a very nice voice. Plays the guitar well, too. Maybe she’s embarrassed about singing from her wheelchair,” he suggested.

  “Maybe. It’s not hard to believe she was a stunner as a younger woman,” I said.

  “I think she was still pretty hot right up to that last night when she had two men fighting over her,” he said.

  “All of that business must have been very unsettling for Billy?”

  “Oh, yes. He told me early on in the piece that he was proposing to run away when he turned fifteen,” Steele said.

  “And now, there’s a lot of expectation that he might be the next big thing on the country music scene. You should be very proud of what you’ve done with Billy.”

  “A lot of personal attention allied with his natural ability. The big test will be when he has to handle things in the big wide world. Some people lap up the attention they receive and some go down the gurgler. Drugs and alcohol are the killers. They’ve wrecked a lot of careers. I won’t always be there to hold Billy’s hand when he goes on the road.”

  I found Clay easy to talk with and not at all reluctant to discuss quite personal subjects, except perhaps when I asked him what he wanted from life. He looked at me in a rather guarded fashion.

  “Peace and a degree of contentment from living simply and close to nature because I’m very thankful I didn’t die when I might have,” he said.

  “Do you plan on staying here for long?”

  “I haven’t thought of leaving at all,” he said. “Billy will be my responsibility for a while yet and I write well here.”