Matthew Flinders' Cat (52 page)

‘Cool!’ Ryan exclaimed, obviously excited. ‘When I was with them, I tried to think what Trim would’ve done but I don’t suppose cats know about them things.’

‘Ryan, would you like to tell me what happened?’ Billy asked tentatively, not wishing to push the boy.

Ryan looked down at his feet, he had gone to sit on his skateboard at Billy’s feet with Maria’s two containers in front of him, one was already empty and now he started on the other. There was a long silence before he looked up slowly. ‘They made me do a bad thing, Billy.’

‘Tell me about it, lad. When you’re forced into doing a bad thing it’s not the same as doing a bad thing on your own.’

‘Yes it is! They said if you’re a poofter then it don’t never go away. If you do it once, it’s the same as a hundred times.’ Ryan began to weep again, softly, sniffing, trying to control his misery. ‘I ain’t a poofter, Billy, I know I ain’t.’

‘No, of course you’re not, lad.’

‘But they said.’

‘It doesn’t matter what they said, Ryan. It’s what’s in your heart. But who are
they
?’

‘The Queenie.’

‘Just The Queenie?’

‘No, and some of the men there.’

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, lad?’ Billy said.

‘Didn’t you say you had a plan?’ Ryan asked.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Am I in it?’ Ryan asked anxiously.

‘Of course, and you’ll be safe, I promise.’

Ryan sniffed and wiped his snotty nose on the back of his hand, his face sticky with biscuit crumbs and honey. ‘It was two days after we buried my nana, and me mum woke up and said she felt crook. I asked her if I should call the ambulance, like you know, go to St Vinnie’s because of her asthma. But she said it weren’t bad asthma, just the flu or somethin’ like that. But she stayed in bed and that night when she was supposed to go to work she couldn’t. The next day she was the same, she tried to get up but she fell down and it took me ages to get her back in bed because she were too weak and couldn’t help me. She was sweatin’ and shiverin’ and then she threw up in the towel I brought to wipe her sweat. I seen it before – it’s the withdrawals. I know where she keeps her smack so I did it for her and she’s a bit better but next mornin’ she’s still crook and can’t get up.’

Ryan explained that there was no more heroin in the house and his mother started to withdraw again. He went to St Vincent’s to see Dr Goldstein but was told that the doctor was on nights that week. The registrar saw him and Ryan explained that his mother was ill but he didn’t tell him she was a drug addict, and they hadn’t looked up her records as casualty was very busy at the time. The registrar told him if she got worse to call the ambulance or to see her GP in the morning. Ryan told him that Dr Goldstein was their GP, that he’d come in the past to see his nana and once before to see his mum when Ryan had asked him. The registrar said he’d leave a message.

Ryan returned home and found his mother on the kitchen floor having a withdrawal. She’d managed to get out of bed and crawl through to the phone in the kitchen to call someone about heroin but the phone had been cut off for the last week because she’d neglected to pay the bill. She was too weak to stand or to crawl back to her bed and Ryan had dragged her to the sitting room and fetched the blankets from her bed and covered her up.

‘I shoulda called the ambulance like that doctor said,’ Ryan said, ‘but she told me that it was just that she needed a fix. She said to take a hundred dollars out of her bag and to go to this place in the Cross and see this bloke, to take a photo we had of me and her when we’d gone to Luna Park, so as he’d know I was, like, her son. She said to give him the hundred bucks and ask him for two caps of smack.’ Ryan looked up, ‘I didn’t want to do it but she begged and cried and then she done a vomit on the carpet and she’d et nothin’ and it was just this green stuff come up. She said she’d be fine, she only needed the fix.’

‘This place she sent you to. The man you had to see. Where was that and did he give you his name?’

‘Nah, me mum did, it was Mr Suleman, it was where she worked of a night.’

‘Mohammed Suleman, at The Queen of Sheba?’ Ryan nodded, ‘I showed him the photo and give him the money and he give me two caps. He was real nice and gimme a Coke and told one of the Lebbo blokes at the door to take me to McDonald’s across the road for a hamburger. I told him nah, I had to get back to me mum. Mr Suleman said I was a good boy lookin’ after me mum and if I needed some more smack to come back. He said to tell her she could come back to her job when she was better.’

Dr Goldstein turned up in the morning after his shift at St Vincent’s that night. He examined Ryan’s mother and took a blood sample. When he saw that she was too weak to get out of bed, he said he was pretty sure it was Hepatitis C, which accounted for her chronic fatigue, and that he was going to put her into hospital. She only agreed after he promised they’d give her morphine. She spent two days in hospital on a drip, getting Interferon by means of a subcutaneous injection, then signed herself out, saying that she couldn’t leave Ryan on his own and that she didn’t want ‘none of them bastards from DOCS taking her son away from her’.

It seemed that she tried to go back to work but collapsed and they sent her home in a taxi. She had no money and she needed a fix. It was at that time that Ryan had called on Dorothy Flanagan to get some of Billy’s money and when she’d refused, tried to pawn his grandmother’s ring and locket along with his skateboard.

‘It were just the same as the last time, she was real crook, but we had no money, so me mum said to go and see Mr Suleman again.’ Ryan paused. ‘You see, I’d told her about the Coke and McDonald’s and how he’d said I could come back any time if I wanted. I went to see him that night and I told him what me mum said, that we’d pay him when she got better. He was real nice, but he said he didn’t have any smack though he knew someone who’d give me some for nothing. One of the girls there then took me round the block to the back lane and we come to this door and she pressed this button and a light come on and she said our business and the door opened and we went up these stairs that was just ordinary and suddenly we’re in, like this palace. There’s flowers and a fish pond and these leather couches and marble and pitchiz on the wall and this girl who brung me told me to wait and left. Then this lady come into the room. ‘“Hello, Ryan,” she says.

‘“Hello,” I say to her, but I don’t know how she knows me name.

‘“How’s your mother?” she says. She’s got perfume on and you can smell it. “Oh, Mr Suleman told me she’s not well,” she says. I still don’t say nothing. “Would you like a Coke?” she says. I don’t really want one, but I say, “Okay, cool.”

‘“Monkey!” she shouts out. This bloke come out and he’s dressed like a waiter in one of them black suits and bow ties and he has a Coke with a straw on a silver tray. “Monkey’s a dancer,” she says as he puts down the Coke.

‘“Hello,” I say. You can see he’s a poofter.

‘Monkey smiles and looks at The Queenie. “Hmm, lovely,” he says to her. I don’t know if he’s talkin’ about the Coke or him being a dancer or he thinks she’s pretty, so I say nothing, except I think Monkey is a real crook name.’

Ryan looked up at Billy and then down at the second container of Maria’s delicacies, which was now half empty. ‘I can’t eat no more, Billy.’

‘Good, I’m glad you enjoyed them.’ Billy pointed to the fountain. ‘The drinking fountain’s working again. Why don’t you go and wash your face, lad?’

When Ryan returned and seated himself back on the skateboard, Billy hoped that he might continue, but now he said, ‘You said you had two more Trim stories, when will you tell them to me?’

‘Any time you like, lad, but I had rather hoped you might tell me what happened next. You see,’ Billy explained, ‘I have a plan I’ll tell you about later, but I think it might help if I knew a bit more.’ Billy marvelled at the ability of the young to live in the present, though he knew that Ryan would be deeply affected for the rest of his life.

Ryan started right off where he’d left his story. ‘She said she could give me what I wanted but she hoped I could do something for her. “What can you do, Ryan?” she asked me.

‘I don’t know what she means. “I can’t do nuthink,” I say, “I’m only eleven.”

‘She smiles at me. “A little dickie bird told me you can sing,” she says. I don’t know how she knows but I tell her I can a little bit. “Well then, perhaps you’ll sing for us?”

‘There’s only her and me and I say “I dunno.”

‘She holds up a cap, “Come now.” She kind of laughs, like it’s just us two havin’ fun. “One good turn deserves another, Ryan.”

‘“I don’t know lots of stuff to sing,” I tell her.

‘“‘Ave Maria’, you know that,” she says. I dunno how she knows this, but then she says, “The school concert.”’

Ryan glanced at Billy. ‘We done this concert at school last year and she must’ve come or something. Lots of people came from all over, it was a big success.

‘She’s holding up the cap o’ smack. I stand up. “No, no, we have an audience!” She takes my hand and we go into this room that’s like marble, white everywhere, and there a big spa and there’s four blokes sitting in it in all these bubbles. “What have we got here, The Queenie?” one of them shouts out ’cause the spa is making a noise with all the water and the bubbles.

‘Now I know her name. So Queenie walks over and switches off the spa. “This is Ryan, gentlemen, he has a voice like an angel,” she says.

‘The blokes clap. “Good on ya, Ryan,” one o’ them shouts.

‘So I sing “Ave Maria” and one of the blokes is crying when I done it and one of the others says, “I’ll give you fifty bucks if you’ll sing another song.”

‘That’s cool. If he pays me fifty bucks I can give it to the lady and then we don’t owe her no favours like. So I sing, “We are One but We are Many”, it’s a song we done at school. And they clap again and he gives me the fifty bucks which is exactly what a cap costs.

‘The lady takes me back where we come in and she gives me the cap. “I hope your mother is better soon,” she says to me. I hand her the fifty dollars. “No, no, that’s yours, Ryan, you’ve earned it, you have a beautiful voice.”

‘“It’s fifty dollars for a cap, Queenie,” I say, ’cause now I know her name.

‘“This one’s on the house, Ryan.” She smiles at me. “But I tell you what, if you need more I’ll pay you fifty dollars to sing any night you want. Have we got a deal?” We go to the stairs so I can go home and she says, “By the way, it’s The Queenie, that’s my name.” She says it again, like it’s very important, “
The
Queenie.”’

Billy again marvelled at Ryan’s ability at his age to capture the detail and the atmosphere of his surroundings. He’d make an excellent lawyer, he thought. And then instantly he remembered what Davo had said about Osmond Hall and what could happen to this bright little boy.

Ryan told Billy how his mother had remained in bed, too weak to move. Dr Goldstein had visited her again and given her another injection of Interferon. He had tried to persuade her to return to hospital but she’d been paranoid about leaving Ryan and the prospect of DOCS placing him in an institution until she recovered. At one stage Dr Goldstein had arranged for the Salvation Army Early Intervention House at Hurstville to take him, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d even tried to con him into believing she was off heroin because of the Hep C, although he probably wouldn’t have believed her. Anyway, Ryan sang for his supper for the next eight days. He also managed to turn up at school for some of that time, which had stopped Dorothy Flanagan initially calling in DOCS.

On the evening of the eighth day of Ryan getting a cap of heroin in lieu of his fifty dollars, The Queenie had said to him, ‘Ryan, there is a man who’s come all the way from Germany who wants to hear you sing, he’ll pay you two hundred dollars.’

Ryan had grown accustomed by now to ‘the club’ and, besides, no one had laid a hand on him, but nevertheless he was no fool. ‘Why, The Queenie? I can’t sing no better for two hundred dollars.’

The Queenie had laughed. ‘No, of course, but he can’t come here, it’s in the afternoon, you have to go to the apartment he’s rented in Bondi Junction.’ The Queenie shrugged. ‘It’s good money, Ryan, and Monkey will drive you in the limo.’

‘What’s a limo?’ Ryan asked.

‘It’s like a taxi, only it’s a Mercedes or BMW,’ The Queenie had said. ‘It’s all right, Monkey will take you,’ she said again.’

‘Did you tell your mother all this?’ Billy asked.

‘Nah, she just thought I was getting it from Mr Suleman.’

‘But why didn’t you tell her? After all, apart from procuring heroin, you hadn’t been compromised.’

‘What’s that mean, “compromised”?’

‘It means you weren’t coming to any harm.’

Ryan shrugged. ‘I dunno, she didn’t ask, so I didn’t say nothin’.’ He looked up at Billy and then, as if explaining the obvious, said, ‘Addicts just want a fix, they don’t care where it comes from, Billy.’

In some things, Billy thought, Ryan was already too old for his years.

Ryan went on to tell Billy how he’d arrived at the apartment block in Bondi Junction and Monkey had pushed a button in the foyer from a whole row of buttons with names on them. ‘But the one he pushed didn’t have a name, only a number.

‘“Ja?” a voice says through a grid thing on the wall.