Matthew Flinders' Cat (33 page)

In the past week he had audited his life dozens of times and always with the same bottom line. He was weak, he’d covered it up all his life by being a nice bloke, but underneath he knew he was gutless. How could he possibly think he, of all people, could survive the process of rehabilitation? In the end he would let everyone down. Might as well do that now.
On your bike, Billy, much easier on everyone
. He started to rise . . .
You’re sailing away on the
Bridgewater
, Billy
, a second voice cried from deep inside him. He looked at the Salvo major then averted his eyes again. ‘I ...I think I’d like to . . .’ but he could go no further.

Cliff Thomas, a big teddy bear of a man, reached over and took Billy’s hand. ‘Mate, we’re all like that, wondering how we can possibly rehabilitate ourselves. Billy, look at me please. Look at me.’ Billy, fighting back his tears, reluctantly met the other man’s eyes. ‘The answer is we can’t, but with God’s help and one day at a time, we shall,’ Thomas said gently.

‘I’m a coward. I’m a weak bastard, I don’t know if . . .’

‘Shush! Don’t talk dirty, boyo! We’re all weak, but that’s not the problem this time. The problem is that you have an illness, a disease, that’s what we have to treat. If you had cancer, I mean, think of it like this, imagine I’m your doctor, okay?’ Thomas’s voice dropped half an octave.
‘Mr O’Shannessy, I’m afraid the news isn’t that good, you’ve been diagnosed with cancer.’
Thomas’s affected voice continued,
‘But if you are willing to undergo the right treatment we can almost guarantee we can get you into remission in eight months.’
Thomas looked at Billy and, in his normal voice, said, ‘What would you say, Billy?’

Billy didn’t reply and simply shook his head, understanding what it was the Salvo was telling him.

‘No, Billy, I want a reply!’ Thomas insisted, waiting for Billy’s first affirmation. ‘What would you say?’ Billy sniffed. ‘Well, I’d have to say yes.’

‘Of course, be crazy if you didn’t. Thankfully you
haven’t
got cancer, you’ve got another progressive illness, but one that usually takes about the same time to fix. Fix is quite the wrong word, of course. Like cancer, you’ll be in remission, but
unlike
cancer,
you
decide how long your health will last. You, not the disease, will decide whether you want to go back to being very sick or want to stay healthy, hopefully for the rest of your life.’

‘Thank you, major, I hear what you’re saying. It’s just that . . .’

‘One day at a time,’ Cliff Thomas interrupted, ‘that’s all you have to pledge and you don’t have to do it all on your own. In fact, you can’t. We now know that the problem with this particular chronic disease is that it’s progressive and irreversible, it is not a question of willpower or weakness. A psychological definition of alcoholism is that it causes you to drink
against
your will. Total abstinence will halt it in its tracks but won’t cure it. It takes only one drink to activate the illness again and send you off on a binge.’

‘Thank you. Yes, I’d like to go on the program, major.’ Just then Kylie, a young woman who looked no older than eighteen, knocked and entered, carrying a small tray. She placed a cup of tea and two Panadol and a small brown pill in front of Billy and then a glass of water. ‘Six sugars! I bet your dentist likes you,’ she said, grinning. She pointed to the tiny pill. ‘Nurse says this little one is to prevent a messy nappy,’ she giggled.

‘Thank you, Kylie, that will be enough from you!’ Thomas said, laughing. ‘Don’t put any calls through until I let you know and close the door behind you, please.’

Thomas waited until she’d left before saying to Billy, ‘She’s a bit forward, but I’d rather have ’em full of beans like that than down in the mouth. Kylie’s a great little example, she’s been off heroin now for eighteen months and she’s kicked methadone as well.’ Cliff Thomas pointed to the closed door, ‘It’s kids like that who make me want to cry out with joy.’

Billy nodded, thinking of Trevor Williams’ daughter. ‘Well, she’s perfectly right, of course, a trip to the dentist is long overdue.’

‘Billy, you do know that we don’t do the rehab here, don’t you?’ Thomas asked. Billy nodded. ‘It’s done at William Booth which is down the road a bit. Major Harris is in charge there, a good Christian and a nice chap all round, but you’ll mostly work with Vince Payne, the pocket dynamo, he’s not a Salvo, but is the program director. You’ll be in safe hands. Do you know anything about AA?’

‘Alcoholics Anonymous?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just the usual, the meetings they hold for reformed alcoholics.’

‘Right, well, perhaps reformed isn’t quite correct, you see you will always be an alcoholic but one who doesn’t drink. There’s a bit more to it than attending a few meetings, AA is your support group, your strong right arm.’ Cliff Thomas looked at Billy. ‘When you sign on, well, it’s not just for the next eight months, it’s for the rest of your life.’

Billy hesitated. ‘I understand there’s rather a lot of appealing to God. I’m afraid I’m not very good at that, haven’t attended church since I was married.’

The Salvo major laughed. ‘I know what you mean. Although my early life was Methodist, my drinking life was atheist. Now, of course, I’m a born-again Christian, the Big Bloke and me are on very personal terms. Perhaps I can put it to you a little differently. AA has a central premise that seems to work, one they’ve tested tens of thousands of times. I’ll put it to you as bluntly as I can. Chaps like us, alcoholics, don’t successfully rehabilitate without the help of someone or something, a Higher Power, we can believe in. For me, it’s God, but in the AA group I attended there was a greenie who had as her Higher Power a tree she once saw in Tasmania, a giant red gum. Another chap, a cow cocky from the country, used a blue heeler he once had. He’d say, if you’ll excuse the French, “That bloody mutt was possessed of an intelligence and a spirit bigger than any bloody human!” So you see, for me it’s the Lord Jesus and for someone else it’s a tree or a superior cattle dog.’ He grinned. ‘Whatever you choose as your Higher Power, you’re going to need one to come out of the other end sober.’

The idea of a tree as his Higher Power appealed to Billy and he wondered if he should use
Eucalyptus maculata
, the spotted gum he’d intended for his grave. After some thought, though, he chose Trim. After all, it was Trim who had brought Ryan into his life and, like the blue heeler used by the bloke from the bush, there was no doubting that Master Mariner Trim Flinders had been a superior being in his time. His spirit most certainly lived on. Any cat who had survived two hundred years of history was worthy of being regarded as a Higher Power. After all, the ancient Egyptians had regarded cats as gods, so why shouldn’t Billy choose the first cat to circumnavigate Australia?

Billy wasn’t being blasphemous, he had never doubted the faith of others, in fact, quite the opposite. He had admired his wife’s complete dedication to her Catholic faith and her absolute belief in the sanctity of the Pope as God’s disciple on earth. He greatly admired the Salvos and their faith in a loving and compassionate Jesus Christ. It was just that he hadn’t paid his dues and now that he was in need of help he didn’t feel he had earned the right to be a supplicant.

Of course, those with complete faith would constantly point out to him, often pedantically, that this was the whole purpose of a loving God, who didn’t count fealty and compliance as the requisite for redemption. His love was all-embracing, all-forgiving,
‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.’
It was a simple matter of total faith, total acceptance, total surrender to a Higher Power.

But Billy, much as he would have loved to hand his life over to this highest of all the Higher Powers, knew that he lacked the faith required to commit his everlasting soul to God’s mercy and love. In his own eyes he had been a phony all his life, this time he would need to be honest and trust in himself.
To thine own self be true
, it was a mantra he kept repeating.

‘You’ll be staying at William Booth for the next three weeks,’ Cliff Thomas said.

Billy had been told at Resthaven that this would be the case and so he nodded. He’d greatly miss waking up at dawn to Arthur and Martha and the singing in of the light by his glorious avian choir. It was something he had hungered for while he’d been away. He comforted him self with the thought that after the first three weeks he could still work around the AA program and resume some of his routines, his morning inspection of the Botanic Gardens, Operation Mynah Bird at the luncheon break, and his writing seated on the bench beside the pond and opposite the mighty Moreton Bay.

Billy felt a sudden stab of pain when he thought of Con at the New Hellas Cafe. Such a good bloke really, he’d have to attempt to patch things up, though he couldn’t think quite how this might be done. He suddenly realised that for the first time since he’d run away he had a tiny sense of hope, a sliver of light. Now all he had to do was hang on for dear life and crawl towards it.

But Billy’s hopes were about to be severely dashed. Cliff Thomas dialled the William Booth Institute and asked for Vince Payne. When Vince came to the phone, Cliff went through the usual courtesies, then said, ‘Billy O’Shannessy is with me, he arrived on this morning’s bus from Surfers Paradise, is it convenient to bring him over now?’ Vince must have said they’d send someone, because Thomas said, ‘No, no, I’ll bring him myself, I could use the exercise.’

On the way to Albion Street, Cliff Thomas told Billy his own story. He was one of fourteen children. His father had died three months before his youngest brother was born and his mother had to raise the eight of them who were still too young to work. She was strict and pious, a God-fearing woman who insisted they all attend Sunday School. Cliff Thomas smiled. ‘If you used a coarse word you got it over the head with the broomstick.’ It was a pretty tough life and at the age of fourteen, Cliff, big enough to pass for an eighteen-year-old, found himself increasingly in the pub with his older brothers.

‘By the time I was eighteen and decided to join the army, I had acquired a taste for drink. No, worse than that, I
needed
to drink. With an army salary three times as much as I’d previously earned I could drink three times as much. I now realise that three years into military service I had become an alcoholic, though, of course, army discipline and hours hid this from my superiors, perhaps even from myself. I was one of the lads, a good man to be with when you needed a busy elbow at your side. I told myself I had a bit of a problem, but nothing I couldn’t manage, young blokes always think they’re invincible.’

‘Ah, don’t I know! A problem drinker, definitely not an alcoholic, give it up any time I like,’ Billy interrupted.

The Salvo smiled. ‘I guess denial is something we learn very early in the game. But I was about to be flushed out into the open. My battalion was sent overseas, to Cyprus, where we’d go on extended, what were called dry exercises, no alcohol allowed.’ Thomas shrugged and turned to Billy. ‘In a big family you learn to take care of yourself, I was ever the resourceful one and started to make my own booze.’

‘What, beer? Home brew?’ Billy asked.

Cliff Thomas laughed. ‘No such luck. Metho, brasso and melted-down boot polish, it had a kick like a mule and the ingredients were always available. It soon became my preferred drink. By the time I was in my mid-twenties the battalion M.O., not knowing of course that I was drinking metho, told me that my health was breaking down, and if I didn’t give up going to the canteen I wouldn’t see the ripe old age of thirty.’ Thomas then asked Billy, ‘You a Catholic, Billy? What I mean by that, did you have early religious instruction?’

‘No, Protestant, my wife is Catholic, O’Shannessy spelled my way comes from the north of Ireland. Church in my family was for formal occasions, births, deaths and marriages, my father called himself an agnostic.’ Billy laughed. ‘Which was rather amusing, he was a Supreme Court judge and was forced to swear allegiance to God every day of his life.’

‘Well, it was different for me. For us, early Methodist training leaves you feeling guilty all your life. I knew I was sinning, going against God’s will by being a heavy drinker, so I solved that problem easily.’

‘You did?’ Billy’s headache was lifting slightly and the walk, in the mid-winter sunshine, was pleasant.

‘Certainly, I went to my company commander and had the word “Methodist” removed from my army records and the word “Atheist” replace it. I was free to drink without feeling guilty.’ Cliff Thomas shook his head. ‘The mind plays funny games, boyo. I never get over the ability we all have to justify our actions no matter how bizarre. It seems most of mankind is in some kind of denial.’

‘How did you get to Australia?’ Billy asked quickly, hoping to avoid the subject of denial.

‘Well, I could see the writing on the wall, so I purchased my discharge from the army before they kicked me out. There was nothing for me back home, my friends had all married, my brothers and sisters had scattered around the world and my mother had gone to Methodist heaven.’ Thomas stopped and gave a cheeky grin, ‘Australia seemed a highly suitable destination for a drunk.’

Billy laughed. ‘History proves you right. Most of our male citizens spent the first hundred years pissed, and the second hundred hasn’t been enough of a contrast for any of us to notice a significant difference.’