Show Me The Sky Read online

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s good for me to talk. I think. Again he came to me and said I should be his teacher. I said no, he should learn himself. But really I liked him. He was direct. What do you say, cheeky?’

  ‘Ha. Yeah, cheeky.’

  ‘It took me a few days to lose the solitude of the desert. I’d been cycling alone for weeks, months. I forgot how to communicate, have fun, and, you know, be admired. But he was very persistent, and finally I gave in.’

  ‘Did you travel together?’

  ‘He was going where I’d already been, the central deserts. He was typical English bravado, wanted to conquer the sands like Lawrence of Arabia. And something else about his drive, some trauma he was running from. But this only made him more interesting to me. Anyway, I told him to use his brain before his body. Before his journey south we went on a little trip to Kakadu, you know, to see the crocodiles and the giant lilies, and then on to Litchfield Park. We toured around for three weeks on his motorbike. For ten days it was just the two of us, completely alone. We took turns on the pillion. He was impressed how I rode, and we went deeper into the park, off the tracks, camping by the springs and waterfalls. So beautiful. Cooking at dusk, talking around the fire, then … then the morning, swimming naked in the streams and rock pools with the little silver fish. We were Adam and Eve. Time stretched for ever. We found aboriginal paintings, pictures of humans transformed into animals, flying, dancing, giving birth to the world. We could’ve stayed for weeks but we finally ran out of food. Because we were afraid of leaving the bush we actually fasted for a day and night, only drinking from the stream. Hungry yes, but for each other, not food. Then finally we had to go. Now, I don’t believe in signs, you know, omens. But on the way from the park, we had to ride between the bushfires. Huge, some of them, the smoke so black against the blue sky. Let me show you something … One moment. I have a picture.’

  ‘Of the bushfires?’

  ‘And Cal … Here.’

  ‘Wow. You’re so close to the flames. Who took it?’

  ‘The timer. I told you he was crazy. He rode right up to the fire, jumped off the bike and put the camera on a rock. About ten seconds after this picture, this tree here, just exploded. Whoosh. A firework. And Cal was laughing and laughing, the sparks showering us as we rode away … riding and laughing … Excuse me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, really. I didn’t mean to make you upset. Here, I have a tissue.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bring all this back.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’ve kept too much inside for too long. This is why I couldn’t stay in France. I had to come back here, to the desert, and the sky.’

  ‘Not a lonely place to live?’

  ‘There is more life than meets the eye in the desert. And anyway, I share this home with my fiancé.’

  ‘A fiancé? Is he French too?’

  ‘Australian, part aborigine. And you?’

  ‘Erm … separated. I have a daughter, four years old. Gemma. But anyway, we don’t want to hear about me. Now, I’m sure it’s not easy to talk about, but …’

  ‘No. But, well … I want to … You know I said I would travel with him, that we could ride the Sandover Highway together. But he said he needed to go alone, to know himself in all that space. So a week later I’m waiting in Mount Isa. One day, two days worrying where he was. Then I decided to call the police, first in Mount Isa, then Alice Springs. Both the officers told me the track was clear, and they had no reports of anyone lost. I told them he was late to meet me and they asked if he was a relative or my husband. I said no, and then they asked if he was my boyfriend. When I said I was not sure, they presumed the same as me. That he had stood me up. They thought I was some, how do you say, erm, fling? Yes, some fling he had forgotten. I waited one more day, then called the Alice Springs officer one more time. He told me a friend of his from Cairns had arrived that morning, by 4WD via the Sandover Highway. Then he began to lecture me that “a young fella needs to spread his wings”. I slammed the phone down. I was angry at Cal two times. One, he had just walked away from me. Two, he had not the sense to let me know he wasn’t coming. This was more than courtesy. Anyone travelling across a desert for a date needs to say if they’re late. Or not arriving at all … I was so angry. And all that time he was crawling across the sand … thinking of me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Monique … so sorry.’

  ‘I actually left Mount Isa for Cairns. I thought fuck him. Then asleep on the coach I dreamed he was out there, a nightmare he was dying on the sand. I told the driver to pull over, that I had to get off the bus. He dropped me on the edge of the highway and I hitchhiked back to Mount Isa. I went straight to the airfield and begged a pilot to fly me to Alice Springs. I paid him all the money I had. We flew above the highway the whole way, high enough to see for kilometres either side … high enough to see the smoke from the fire. We circled three times. I could see him lying there. I was screaming at the pilot to land. He said we would crash and be killed, that it was too bumpy. He had to hit me in the face to stop me pulling the plane from the sky.’

  ‘Could he not radio others closer?’

  ‘This was the most desolate part of the highway. The closest rescue had to come from Alice Springs. A police officer and medic were already on their way by the time we landed, but of course I had to go too. I hired a 4WD and drove like a maniac. A few times I nearly crashed. I wanted to catch the rescue unit, thinking they’d get there before me. But the rains were coming. The blue sky was suddenly black. Then the raindrops so huge, like a lake falling from the sky. First the road was just greasy, and then it turned to mud, thick and heavy. About a hundred kilometres from where we’d spotted Cal from the plane, the police officer and the medic were stuck in the ruts. The wheels spinning and spinning. They told me to tow them out but I said no. They had to come with me, we had no time. So the police officer navigated as we drove off the track. I followed the edge of the creek, and already it was rushing with water. And first we saw the little ruin. Then Cal. I jumped out and ran … and … to see him I had to lift the journal off. He must’ve laid the cover over his face to protect himself from the sun.’

  ‘Sorry, Monique. I really don’t want to force you to share such upsetting memories.’

  ‘No. It’s fine. I want to talk. I want to tell you something else, that he … how can I say? He saw something out there. Something I can’t explain.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All the time he was stranded, he was writing. A letter for me. In this letter he explained some very strange things.’

  ‘Could I read it? Or am I rude to even ask?’

  ‘Well, I gave it Philip to read, Cal’s friend. I suppose it makes no difference if you do too. One moment … it’s in this drawer.’

  ‘Thank you, Monique. But honestly, if it’s personal …’

  ‘If I can find it … it should be right here. Only a few days ago Philip had it in his hands. I never put it anywhere else … Merde!’

  ‘Don’t worry. Unless it has anything to do with the manuscript itself?’

  ‘It has everything to do with the manuscript. I told you he saw things out there … other people.’

  ‘Other people? You mean a hallucination? From lack of water? Thirst?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. He wrote about things in such detail. This kind of happening scares me. I don’t believe in God or ghosts, so when a man I love and trust tells me he saw a Victorian priest wandering the desert, I’m afraid. Afraid that I don’t understand the world I live in, that I’m missing something.’

  ‘A priest?’

  ‘Well, a reverend. A Reverend Thomas. And a convict called McCreedy.’

  ‘And this is all in the letter?’

  ‘I need to show you … It should be here. I don’t understand. Three days ago.’

  ‘This Philip, he read the letter?’

  ‘What? Yes, of course. I told you, he was a friend of Cal’s
from school.’

  ‘So he was English?’

  ‘From the same town.’

  ‘I guess in his early twenties?’

  ‘Why would he interest you? I thought you wanted to know about the finding of the manuscript?’

  ‘Oh, er, yes. I just want to know if anyone else is researching as thoroughly as I am. All this work I’m doing. And at the university’s expense.’

  ‘He just wanted to know more about his friend, what happened at the end. He and Cal grew up together.’

  ‘Is he still here?’

  ‘I don’t know? I’m not sure. OK, Dr Adams. Look, I can’t find the letter. Maybe my fiancé moved it somewhere. And I have some things to do. Even in a little town like this we are busy sometimes.’

  Riding between these homes of solid rock, the dugout suburbs of a desert town, I wonder if Monique Cabanne’s visitor stole that letter. And if he did, why? I wanted to ask if she were sure this ‘Philip’ was not Billy K.

  But of course I was Dr Adams, a researcher of South Pacific history. I was there enquiring about the manuscript, not a missing rock star.

  Back at the hotel I lie on the bed and listen again to the Dictaphone recording. I write the names Thomas and McCreedy in my notebook. The Reverend Thomas exists, I know this much from reading the journal. But McCreedy isn’t familiar.

  I take a shower, remove a knotted condom blocking the plug hole. Hardly the Ritz. From the bathroom window I can see palm trees, the leaves rattled by the wind. I stand naked and shave, blown dry by the desert breeze. Back in the room I switch on the TV and sit on the bed. Breaking news is the success of a DNA sweep by local police, the apprehension of a murder suspect from 1979. I’m jealous, and wonder why the hell I’m lounging around.

  Then I realise something. When the journal reached the university, before it was restored, transcribed and printed for a twenty-first century readership, the pages were melded into a solid block. Only the first two diary entries had been legible. Neither of which mention the Reverend Thomas. So how did Cal Smith know his name?

  Instead of sitting in my room thinking about Billy K, and the ghost of a dead reverend, I sit on a high stool in the hotel bar. And think about Billy K.

  It’s 6 p.m. This is where the thirsty locals drink, dusty men from construction sites and opal mines, dropping in for a swift one on the way home. Then staying until closing time. I order an orange juice and watch others get drunk, because it stops me doing the same.

  The barman flicks the TV from rugby league to horse racing. The noisy hubbub dies for the start of the race, and then builds with the breathless commentator along the final furlongs. A man called Chukka slaps his thigh like a jockey, leaping off his seat when his horse noses in first. He waves his betting slip shouting, ‘You fucking beaut.’ When his friends call out their orders, he shouts, ‘Pick your own winners, and buy your own piss.’ And as if to taunt me he’s wearing a Billy K: WANTED T-shirt, the million-selling design with the cancelled tour dates printed on the reverse.

  Invisible in the corner with my soft drink, only the barman has asked me where I’m from. When I said England he nodded his head and served someone else.

  I have my notebook open on the table. The name McCreedy has been underlined and circled, repeatedly. But I want to think of something else. Not the hallucination of a lost motorcyclist, not Billy K. Or the fact I’m supposed to be taking my daughter to a petting zoo this weekend.

  I pick up a copy of the local paper discarded on the counter, wrinkled with spilled beer. I want to hide in their words, lives unconnected to mine. The lead story is about a funding award to renovate the local park. Dominating page two is a letter to the editor warning about addiction to slot machines, ‘pokies’. I look up from the article where men huddle around a bleeping, flashing, money eater. Before I turn back to the paper, Chukka, the happy gambler, catches my eye and wobbles over.

  ‘I bet you’re a Pom. A thousand bucks.’

  I bet him a thousand bucks he’s Australian.

  ‘Too right.’ He slides along the bar. The Billy K face stares from his chest. ‘You don’t look like a backpacker. You here on business?’

  I tell him research, that I’m from a university. Before I fabricate further he stops listening and starts talking, slurring the ends of his words. ‘Nothing against you fellas. And fuck, a shitload of people hate your guts. Bloody Poms, they say. Not me. Me mum’s got a plate on the wall with a picture of old Lizzie in the middle.’

  I suggest we might even be related, go back two hundred years, and who knows?

  ‘Bloody truth. Get this. Me brother, real smart. He’s the manager at P&G tool hire, on George Street. Well, last year he fucks off to Canberra for business. You been there?’

  I tell him I haven’t.

  ‘Don’t fucking bother. Fake town. Shit pubs. But straight up now, me brother comes back from his business trip, with guess what, only the family bloody tree.’

  Then Chukka looks down at his chest, studying the T-shirt, as if the Billy K face might join in the conversation. He starts patting the material and I have no idea what’s happening.

  ‘Where the fuck’s that gone? Shit. Don’t tell me I’ve lost it. Hold on.’ Next he starts undoing his work shirt tied in a knot around his waist. ‘I know, mate, I’m a fucking mess. Just don’t tell the missus, ay.’ He undoes the shirt and opens it out. ‘Here it is.’

  He thrusts a large white badge into my face. A speech bubble from a cartoon man with a ball and chain says, Convict and Proud.

  ‘Me brother went to the national records. Turns out me great great granddad stole a loaf of bread and got thrown in the brig. And I tell you what, better finding out I’m a crim than a copper, one of those bastard redcoats.’

  I laugh. I say, ‘Who’d wear a badge that said, Policeman and Proud?’

  I still have my clothes in a plastic carrier bag. When I stand before the bold lines and columns of the National Library, the stately, whitewashed pillars reflected in the lake, I feel too dirty to enter, a rootless hobo.

  About a minute after drunken barfly Chukka showed me his Convict and Proud badge, I walked to the bus station and bought a ticket to Canberra. If it occurred to me to check out McCreedy, then Monique Cabanne’s mystery visitor might have also wondered about the connection. Perhaps Billy K, a man obsessed with the words of the journal, suddenly hearing a new name in the story of Babbage and Thomas, wanted to know more too.

  But of course I don’t believe I’m suddenly on his trail, do I?

  The next morning, before beginning the search for McCreedy at the convict archives, I go into a public toilet with a plastic razor and shaving foam bought from a chemist. I’m shaving for other people, not me. Appearance is a luxury right now. Massaging the foam into my stubble, feeling the skin tug on the cheap blade, I wonder if Billy K stands before a bathroom mirror each morning. Can he look himself in the eye, his very own ghost? And if he is out there, alive and kicking, does he know I’m after him?

  At the bus station in Canberra I had bought a leather holdall. With it swinging from my hand, I feel respectable enough to walk through the grand doors of Australia’s depository of knowledge. I ask at the front desk about researching the convict records, and fill out a request card with little more than the name McCreedy, and an arrival date guessed between the years 1820 to 1840.

  Waiting in line to speak to an archivist, I read that between 1787 and 1868, the convict transportation register lists 160,023 men and women arriving here in chains. Crimes punishable by shipment to Australia included stealing fish from a pond or river, bigamy, clandestine marriage, thefts above the value of one shilling, and watermen ferrying illegal numbers of passengers across the Thames.

  My information seems scant considering such staggering numbers, but the archivist, a middle-aged man in a polo shirt and heavy glasses, reads the name on the card and peers above his lenses to see my face.

  ‘Not 1826?’

  ‘Possibly. This is about as much as I
know.’

  ‘That’s quite remarkable. From tens of thousands of names, I get two Englishmen enquiring about the same man in the space of a week. Are you related?’

  Suddenly my heart leaps, thuds in my chest.

  ‘Sir?’

  I realise I’ve been standing staring into space. ‘Sorry. Related? You mean to McCreedy, or the other researcher?’

  ‘Well, either I suppose. People using the records are often tracing relatives, or, until the recent fad for bragging about criminal great-grandparents, forgetting them.’

  I tell him I’m not related to McCreedy. Then, I give him the Billy K physical outline, suggest my cousin might have driven up from Melbourne.

  ‘That seems about right.’

  When I ask for a name he clams up completely.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Confidentiality is paramount for those researching their genealogy. Even if it was your own brother, I couldn’t say.’ Then he taps the card on the desk and says, ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  He returns twenty minutes later with a manila folder.

  ‘Not such a common Irish name, you see. Might be tricky if it were. The English seemed to think our fair land was a pleasant holiday destination for many of their neighbours, particularly those who found work on their lordships’ farms disagreeable.’

  I thank him and take a seat at one of the tables. I open the folder and pull out a photocopy of a handwritten document. A judge at Bow magistrates court signed the sentence of transportation to Australia: Patrick McCreedy, convicted of breaking and entering an apothecary. I read that for the crime of manslaughter of the chemist, he was found not guilty. If he’d been charged, he wouldn’t have travelled any further than the gallows. And I wouldn’t be sitting here hoping he was a link to my missing rock star.

  I walk out the library, almost skipping down the steps. Yes, ridiculous, wishful thinking, I know that much. But I’m following a Billy K lead. And no, I’m not insane enough to think I’ve stumbled upon our Billy himself. Am I? Would he really have given up everything to study the journal, to find out more about Babbage and the story that inspired him to cast off his life and run?