Matthew Flinders' Cat

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Ah, fuck off, yer barrister bastard!’ Casper yelled out, ‘Yer think yer too good for us, that yer shit smells of eudie colognie, but yer not, yer just another fuckin’ drunk, mate.’

  Billy felt strangely happy that his part of the scam hadn’t succeeded. He reminded himself, though, that Marion still lurked in the darkness beyond the door leading from the beer garden. If Williams had escaped without calling in at Marion’s Bar, Sam Snatch would conclude that Casper had somehow screwed up the deal, forcing Billy to leave and the bushie to walk out on him. He wondered how long it would take into the bottle of scotch Casper now had to himself before a thoroughly pissed-off Sam Snatch proceeded to adjust his attitude.

  Billy dodged the traffic, crossed the road to the waterfront and then made his way up the Art Gallery steps towards the Botanic Gardens. He was halfway up when he realised that, in all the agitation, he hadn’t stopped off at the bottle shop. Briefly he considered retracing his steps, but the possibility of running into an angry Sam Snatch made him decide against doing so. He’d had enough aggro for one day. He told himself he’d pick up a bottle elsewhere a little later on in the day.

  As Billy entered the gates of the Botanic Gardens, almost immediately his demeanour changed. Even though he crossed the Gardens to the pub of a morning, his return was an entirely different kind of excursion. It was now his custom to walk every path every day, rain or shine, checking on the trees and the plants, making sure that the gardeners were aware of a shrub or tree or flowering hedge or ground cover that might be in need of care. He noted that the azalea hedge along the Macquarie Wall continued to look sick, he’d have to take that up with the head gardener again.

  Whilst he usually had a bottle tucked away in his briefcase, he wouldn’t touch a drop until his inspection was completed. It was his habit to sit quietly on the various benches, his eyes closed, listening to the birds and the insects to determine if there had been any changes in the immediate environment. Billy knew what time of the year it was from most of the tiny flying insects that would feed or collect pollen around plants. He deeply missed the cries of the smaller birds that had once been so much a part of the Gardens but which the rapacious mynah birds had systematically eliminated.

  Billy had come to regard the Botanic Gardens as his own and assumed a proprietary attitude to all he surveyed. His inspection usually ended around twelve-thirty, when he arrived back at the entrance gates opposite the State Library. It was not until he passed through the gates and crossed the road to the steps of the library on the opposite side that he felt free to take another drink.

  Billy was now back where his day had begun but this time he sat himself in the sun on one of the library steps and waited among the early lunchtime crowd for the Indian mynah birds, which would only begin to gather in real numbers around the library steps around a quarter to one. Intelligent birds, they seemed to know the various feeding times and sites. Billy made a habit of sitting in a different spot every day so that the cunning shit-spreaders wouldn’t associate one part of the steps with danger. He watched as they started to fly in and waited until they presented themselves in sufficient numbers before he opened his briefcase.

  Quietly he slipped a single surgical glove over his right hand, withdrew the coffee container and placed it beside him. Selecting a single pellet of bread, he rolled it down the steps in front of him and watched as a flurry of mynahs made for the prize which was quickly snapped up by one of the bigger birds. Past experience showed that the bigger ones got more than their fair share, which Billy regarded as a waste of precious ammunition. So, observing the whereabouts of the bird who’d won the first morsel, he threw the next pellet as far from it as possible, thus bagging a second victim. Billy patiently repeated the procedure for an hour, until virtually every bread pellet had been nabbed by a different mynah bird. There only remained the denunciation.

  Billy peeled off the glove, stuffed it into the empty coffee container, walked over to a nearby rubbish bin and disposed of it. Then he shackled his briefcase about his wrist, walked to the top step of the library entrance and commenced to recite a piece of doggerel of his own composition, causing the people seated on the steps to look at him in bemusement.

  No Mynah Matter

  All the birds of the air are

  a’crying and a’sobbing.

  They’ve heard of the death

  of the wren and the robin.

  Of the Wagtail triplets

  killed asleep in their nest

  And poor Jacky Winter,

  twice stabbed in the breast.

  The birds are all asking

  They’re all in a twitter.

  Is it someone among us

  who’s Jacky the Ripper?

  These are our Gardens

  where we’ve lived all our lives.

  Who’s the terror among us

  with beak sharp as knives?

  Hey, beady-eyed stranger

  with the long yellow legs!

  You’ve been seen prowling around

  where the robin lays eggs.

  Ha! Caught you red-handed!

  Now it’s your turn to pay.

  Judge Billy O’Shannessy

  has been called to the fray.

  The long arm of the law

  has reached out at last.

  Operation Mynah Bird

  is now come to pass.

  This promise I make you

  as a bird-loving man.

  Their mob is in trouble,

  the shit’s hit the fan!

  Small birds will return to

  where the kookas laugh.

  The wrens seen once more

  along the bush-lined path.

  The Gardens made safe

  for your dear little nests.

  There’ll be birdsong again

  from small feathered breasts.

  I swear this before you

  on the currawong’s cry.

  These unwelcome strangers

  are all going to die.

  So ladies and gentlemen

  out enjoying your lunch

  You’ve just seen the last

  of this murdering bunch.

  My decision is final

  my judgement must rest.

  The Indian mynah

  has robbed its last nest.

  It’s death by rat poison

  because one of us cared.

  The invasion is over

  the small birds are spared.

  Billy completed reciting the poem, which he was the first to admit wasn’t very good, and told himself that he had every intention of working it up to scan correctly. Nevertheless, it served his purpose of publicly announcing his personal crusade.

  After this, Billy would usually take a sip from his bottle and smile benignly at the sandwich munchers. Then, bowing slightly, he’d wish them all a splendid day and take his leave. One of the very few advantages of being a derelict was that people concluded that you were either drunk or mentally retarded.

  He now made his way down the steps and across the road back into the Botanic Gardens. At this time of the day the giant Moreton Bay fig he loved would cast its shadow across a bench beside a small rock pool situated along a little-used path. He’d been coming to this bench all his adult life, first to eat his lunch and later to study for his entrance to the Bar. Later still, he’d come during a recess from a case he was conducting. Now he liked to sit quietly and write while he worked his way through half a bottle of scotch. The day’s writing would be concluded when the words slipped off the paper into his lap and he found himself too inebriated to continue.

  Today’s task was to put down the story of Trim just as he’d imagined it in his head. He told himself that without the half-bottle of scotch, the words had a good chance of remaining firmly anchored to th
e page. If he could manage to accomplish this, it would more than make up for the day’s disruption and give him the perfect excuse to celebrate a little later.

  To his dismay, as he reached the small pool and walked around it to his bench, he saw that it was occupied. And not only occupied, but a body lay stretched out on it. In all the years Billy had been coming to the bench, it had never once been occupied. Billy could barely contain his anger. This was his bench and nobody was going to take it away from him. He wasn’t a violent man, but things had simply gone too far and he was going to have to do something quite drastic. He cast about for a stone big enough to threaten the intruder and found one at the edge of the pool, a smooth river boulder about the size of a cricket ball. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d use it, but this didn’t seem to matter, the rock in his hand gave him courage. He’d swear and threaten and hold the rock up in a belligerent manner, and hope this would be sufficient to send the bench thief packing.

  Approaching closer, Billy recognised the pair of scuffed Cubans, then the moleskins and the tartan shirt, although the black man’s Akubra appeared to be missing. All the steam went out of him. He dropped the rock and stood quite still, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down to normal. He couldn’t possibly threaten Williams. If the Aborigine wasn’t exactly a mate, he owed him some sort of respect. Besides, his hat was missing and Billy guessed that the ancient Akubra was part of the stockman’s very being, that he must have been extremely drunk to have lost it. The least he could do for the poor bastard was find it again. Billy told himself that this might square things up and assuage his guilt for the incident at the Flag.

  There was only one way to the bench since the path ended at the pond, so Billy retraced his steps. On a small patch of lawn to the left of the gravel path and some twenty metres down from where Williams was lying, he saw an empty scotch bottle and, half hidden in a patch of pampas grass, the hat.

  Williams had obviously selected the lawn as a place to rest but when the sun had moved directly overhead and become too hot, he had decided to move on, falling arse over tit into the tall clump of ornamental grass and losing his hat in the process. Billy could clearly see where the grass had been flattened by his fall. Williams would have regained his feet and staggered along the pathway to the bench, leaving his hat behind.

  Billy retrieved the stockman’s precious Akubra and approached the sleeping man. Standing over him, Billy inquired, ‘You all right, mate?’

  Williams didn’t move. After a few moments, Billy put the hat down on the gravel pathway and shook him tentatively, then a little more roughly, but still he didn’t respond. Finally he shook Williams vigorously, his free hand gripping his shoulder tightly, ‘Wake up, damn you!’ Billy shouted in frustration, but he knew the black man had slipped into a drunken coma.

  Suddenly furious again, Billy kicked out at the bench and felt a stab of pain shoot through his knee. The Aborigine lay face-down, his mouth pushed hard against a wooden slat. It was not unusual for a drunk to throw up while in a coma and if this happened, Williams could possibly drown in his own vomit. Billy knew he’d have to move him so that he lay on his side with his mouth free to breathe. He told himself the bastard could die for all he cared, but knew this wasn’t true.

  Billy sighed. ‘Why me?’ he exclaimed, appealing to the sky, then unlocked the handcuff about his wrist and rested the briefcase against the leg of the bench. Williams lay with one arm folded under his stomach while his other hung loosely over the side of the bench, his fingers slightly bent and his knuckles touching the pathway. Billy attempted to roll him over onto his side but the bench proved too narrow and its backrest prevented the black man’s body from turning. Billy pulled Williams forward so that half of his body rested over the lip of the bench. Bending his knees to take the man’s weight, he gave a great heave and managed to roll Williams on to his side, his head now turned outwards towards the path, his mouth and nose free to breathe. The effort caused Billy to breathe heavily and his nostrils picked up the sour smell mixed with stale alcohol fumes on the black man’s breath. He pulled back involuntarily and it was then that he saw it. Clutched in the Aborigine’s fist was the wad of fifty-dollar notes he’d seen in the pub.

  Billy could scarcely believe his eyes. He’d temporarily forgotten about the money, but now with Williams lying there, he couldn’t leave him on his own. He reached down, expecting to have to pry the notes from the stockman’s fist, but the moment he touched the blackfella’s fingers they relaxed and the stash of pale-yellow plastic notes rolled free and rested on the bench against the stockman’s stomach. Billy’s heart started to pound and, despite himself, he glanced down the pathway to make sure nobody was coming before he reached for the stash. Bending down, he clicked open his briefcase and quickly dropped the money into its interior, snapping it shut, as if by his action he could make the money disappear from his mind.

  Billy had no intention of stealing the blackfella’s money. Nor did he want to have the responsibility of keeping it for him. If he was robbed, something that could happen easily enough, or stopped by a policeman, just as Phillip Orr had done this morning, how would he explain himself? He felt both vulnerable and guilty.

  Billy tried to think what he should do, but the money confused him, it was too great a responsibility and he simply couldn’t cope. He told himself that he wasn’t supposed to be responsible for anything or anyone. That was why he was among the homeless. As a derelict, he didn’t have to feel guilty any longer. He’d paid the price, he was free of obligation to his fellow man. Why should he care about the black bloke? He was a drunk and drunks get rolled, it was what happened in the big smoke. He thought about putting the money back, shoving it into the pocket of the stockman’s moleskins. Maybe Williams would get lucky and wake up and still have it. Even if it was stolen, it was none of Billy’s business anyway.

  But Billy couldn’t do that. He knew that even if the cops found Williams first, the likelihood of him getting his money back was zero. A couple of grand found in the possession of a derelict was a bonus no police officer was going to pass up. He imagined the scene. ‘Here, mate, here’s your fags and lighter and we found this,’ and the cop handing him back his cash. What a joke. It would be a first for the boys in blue all right and, shortly after, the cop who’d returned the money would be officially certified as mentally deficient and dismissed from the Force.

  Billy thought about writing a note and stuffing it in the blackfella’s shirt pocket, telling Williams he’d meet him at Foster House, a hostel known as a ‘Proclaimed Place’, run by the Salvation Army and available to drug addicts and alcoholics who would be brought in to sleep it off. Foster House, among other such places, was referred to among derelicts as the drunk tank. Billy hated the drunk tank the God-botherers offered him in the name of charity and a government subsidy. A night spent in the dormitory at any one of the drunk tanks depressed him for days afterwards. Even though he would be too drunk to protect himself when admitted, the twenty-six men in the windowless dormitory who cried out in their sleep, vomited and defecated upset him more than he liked to admit. While the charities made every effort to keep the dormitory safe and clean, waking up in a drunk tank was not an experience anyone would voluntarily submit to. Though sometimes it was necessary, as instanced by Williams, who was unable to protect or care for himself.

  Billy knew the routine well enough. He’d call Mission Beat and tell them of the stockman’s whereabouts. They’d come in their van to fetch Williams and put him in the drunk tank for the night, where Billy would meet him in the morning after he’d sobered up. There was only one thing wrong with this idea, he had to hang onto the money in the meantime, a responsibility he wasn’t prepared to accept. In his present state, Billy was convinced the presence of the money in his briefcase placed him in terrible danger. His paranoia was not entirely without reason. If Casper Friendly blamed him for the scam going wrong, he might decide to teach him a lesson and come looking fo
r him with some of his henchmen. Casper believed in intimidation and he and his men would proceed to kick the living daylights out of Billy. Then they might search his briefcase and when they found the money, there was a good chance they’d do him in. Casper wasn’t stupid and Billy wasn’t just another derelict whose word couldn’t be trusted. They’d tell themselves that left alive he’d be a reliable plaintiff, dead he would become just another unfortunate statistic among the homeless. Billy’s hope was that the bottle of scotch Williams had paid for had left Casper legless and that he’d wake up having forgotten the entire incident.

  Billy couldn’t help feeling sorry for himself. From the moment he’d been quarrelled awake by Arthur and Martha, things had started going wrong. First the boy, then the cop, then Sam Snatch putting undue pressure on him, and after that Casper Friendly, and now the blackfella passed out on his own private writing bench. It was little comfort to Billy to think that somewhere in the vicinity there were fifty or so mynah birds wishing their forefathers had remained in India.

  Billy tried to think coherently. The only way he could be rid of the responsibility of holding onto the money was to accompany Williams in the Mission Beat van to Foster House, where he’d hand the cash over to Major Pollard. Pollard was a man of God and Billy would make him swear not to tell anyone that he’d returned the money, though this plan also had its problems. God-botherers were consumed by the duty of honesty and Pollard would be forced to ask himself how Billy or, for that matter, Williams had acquired the money. Pollard would then be compelled for the sake of his own protection to tell someone else or he could be indicted for possessing stolen goods. Billy was a lawyer and he knew that secrets are only kept when the incentive to keep them leads to a greater gain than may be had by revealing them. God’s people may not have judged the poor souls they cared for, but they were under no illusions about their charges and weren’t silly enough to place themselves in jeopardy by accepting the word of an alcoholic.