You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead

by Hardy, Marieke

  Bob Ellis was punk, a simmering pot of vitriol who couldn’t give a fuck about the opinions of others and felt so violently revolted by the state of Australian politics that he simply shoved aside convention and manners to say what desperately needed to be said. He cared not for the delicacies of libel laws, nor correct legal procedure. In mixed gatherings he would have no hesitation in referring to unsubstantiated rumour about the sexual predilections of certain Liberal politicians as though it was plain fact, as though he’d personally walked into a hotel room and found them in the act of having sex with a sheep or meddling with a child, and hurried out again with pardons and gasps. Occasionally he spoke the truth. Often he just said the first thing that came into his head, and backed it up with a great wash of feeling. Those who knew him well took his venting diatribes with a grain of salt. I devoured every word. He was a necessary raw wound on an otherwise sanitised Australian political landscape.

  My obsession knew no bounds. In 2000 I became the owner of a perfect Staffordshire Bull-Terrier, six weeks old and caramel with a white neckerchief patch on her chest. I was instantly besotted, following her around the house with the devotion of a new parent.

  I named her Bob Ellis.

  ‘To hell with gender rules!’ I said, to anybody who would listen. ‘She is a she, and Bob Ellis the man is a he, and they exist in separate realms. Allow me my starry-eyed folly.’

  When I told my usually very open-minded and leftwing friend Ben I had named my dog Bob Ellis, his face had twisted into a mask of venom.

  ‘Why?’ he sneered. ‘Is your dog a cunt?’

  This sort of thing would happen regularly when I took Bob Ellis to the park, or out walking. Strangers would approach with smiles, squatting down and murmuring hellos and asking requisite dog-owner questions about how old she was and wasn’t she lovely and how did I get her darling little coat so soft. Some of them, after asking her name, would look up at me sharply with no small amount of horror and disgust.

  ‘Bob Ellis?’ asked one very dear older lady.

  I nodded.

  ‘Why would you . . . how could you do such a terrible thing to this sweet, sweet dog?’

  She was backing off now, shaking her head, as though even being in our immediate vicinity would taint her with the bacteria of evil and cause her to burst into sudden flame. ‘Bob Ellis?? That’s just . . . that’s just cruel, that’s nothing short of cruel.’

  She was in tears when she finally walked away.

  Sometimes I would try to cut this sort of confrontation off at the pass, to avoid the conflict, run the words together as though I had invented an eccentric little faerie name for my dog.

  ‘What’s she called?’ a smiling man would ask.

  ‘Bobellis,’ I would reply. The intonation would change, favouring incomprehension. Bahbells. Bobbles. Boppellesse. It was a safe name to use around children as they didn’t know any better and hadn’t yet formed an opinion on Bob’s writing or politics.

  ‘I love Bob Ellis!’ I would hear a friend’s three-year-old say to his mother and I would feel immense satisfaction. This is how we work on the left side of politics. We indoctrinate children and brainwash them with music and puppies.

  In 2004 the devotion was taken a step further, and I had inked on my right arm a combined homage to Ellis and Kurt Vonnegut.‘And so on, and so it goes’ it reads, winding around a pair of oriental lilies, a walking billboard for the impetuousness of the young and the passion of one particularly besotted twenty-eight-year-old girl. In heated discussions I made excuses for Bob’s at times archaic statements regarding women and abortion.

  ‘He grew up in a religious fundamentalist family,’ I would say shrilly to naysayers. ‘It’s not as if he has a choice.’

  My grandfather had died in 1994, suffering an almighty lightning strike of a heart attack whilst reading the form guide. He had been a left-wing author, brilliant, cantankerous, womanising, tortured, and so admired for his storytelling skills he would sit in pubs for hours, preferring to regale a room full of strangers with anecdotes than go home to some long-suffering and temporary girlfriend.

  ‘Did I ever tell you the yarn about the gunslinger from Gunnedah?’ he would start, packing tobacco into his pipe, and feeling in his brimming coat pocket for notes of his story.

  Frank’s life was chaotic and acerbic. He was once arrested for a swathe of unpaid parking fines, and ran for parliament twice, unsuccessfully. He despised authority and even after leaving the Communist Party carried the acidity of a rebel. When his daughter married a policeman he would make it a habit to call the house at two in the morning, drunk, railing at the piss-disgraceful corruption in the force. My aunt and uncle learned that in such a frame of mind Frank was not to be argued with, and would simply put the phone receiver under the bed until he shouted himself out. Some nights they could just hear him still, a tinny little enflamed warble under the doona, an impassioned plea for sanity no bigger than a pea beneath the mattress of a princess.

  Ellis and Frank shared many similar qualities and with no grandparents remaining alive I found myself subconsciously gravitating towards Bob at Writers Guild events or screen conferences. I met him for the first time at Sydney Wharf, an auspicious occasion I am almost certain he doesn’t remember, and approached with heart and cheeks aflame.

  ‘Mr Ellis—I’m Frank’s granddaughter,’ I began, hoping that the inroad of family would assuage any fears he may have when he later discovered I had a dog at home sharing his name and a huge spray of ink on my right shoulder in part inspired by his work.

  ‘Your grandfather was a brilliant man,’ Bob opined sweepingly. ‘Brilliant. We spent a great deal of time together. We were going to stage a play chronicling the life of Ben Chifley . . .’

  It kept going, a stream of important pontifications and meanderings. He would talk as though delivering a lecture at a state dinner. I ended the afternoon curled at his feet, transfixed, like a particularly attentive pouffe he might have absentmindedly stretched out and rested his feet on at any moment. After a time he seemed to forget I was there and just kept telling stories into mid-air, holding court to an empty foyer. Ellis didn’t need an audience, and I was too awestruck to interrupt or ask questions. We fit together very well.

  Ellis and I skirted around each other for some years after that. I would spot him from afar at opening nights, or pacing the foyer of the ABC looking furious about some perceived slight on behalf of the national broadcaster. A boyfriend and I went to see him launch a book at Readings and stood out the front like teenagers waiting to meet Roxette. When Bob approached we fell apart with mortified giggles and stammers.

  ‘We have a dog . . . my dog . . . she’s in the car,’ I gestured with annoyingly trembling fingers.

  ‘I love dogs,’ replied Ellis shortly, apparently not knowing or caring who we were, nor wishing to wait around and get to know two blushing fuckwits pointing inanely out onto the street. He nodded politely and ambled away. My boyfriend and I looked at each other and, after a pause, squealed delightedly. I was hopping up and down on the spot. Bob Ellis was my Justin Bieber.

  We met again at the 2020 summit and this time he seemed to remember me. We exchanged numbers—I apparently had some legitimacy now, working as an opinion writer—and in time began occasionally texting, on election nights or during some political scandal I had worked myself into a froth over. In time he invited my partner and I to come and stay with him and his family for the weekend.

  ‘Ellis is my hero,’ I fretted to Tim beforehand. ‘Should you really spend the weekend with your hero? Shouldn’t you just stalk them at the AFI awards and leave creepy anonymous messages on their website instead?’

  Heroes are just that because they are elusive, mute, flawless. We admire them from a distance and Blu-Tak their pictures to our wall without ever having to see them stumble down drunk or, in the case of stumbling down drunks, sober and doing yoga. We don’t humanise them because they are not, in our eyes, human. We certainly shouldn’t
go and stay with them for a weekend.

  But we did accept the offer.

  Bob had given us messy, complicated instructions to get to his house and told us to call or text when we were close so he could meet us on the road.

  ‘Our driveway is very easy to miss,’ he said with sighs, as though the degenerate council had deliberately planned it thus.

  We drove out of inner Sydney and up to Palm Beach. It was a warm day and we had the windows of our van rolled down. Tim played bootleg copies of the Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour, loud. We were up to ‘Coffee’. Dylan’s voice flatlined through the car.

  ‘Imagine we were going to spend the night at Dylan’s house,’ Tim said.

  ‘He’s a grumpy old cow too, apparently.’

  ‘Or Tom Waits! We could go and stay in his junkyard palace.’

  Palm Beach was as idyllic as Ellis had described, strolling couples with very white teeth laughing in a carefree fashion as they passed by sprawling cafes. Everything seemed clean and rich.

  We rounded a sharp corner and saw him standing there, shirt untucked, belly protruding, a hulking figure, one of Satan’s lollipop ladies. He pointed to a scooped-out section of cliffside and told us to park there, in front of his ancient Volvo. It was difficult to negotiate, particularly on a hairpin bend with oncoming traffic tooting with irritation, and almost immediately Tim started to panic.

  ‘I can’t reverse park while Bob Ellis is watching me!’ he whispered.

  We could see Bob pointing and directing and flapping his arms around and saying something loud we couldn’t quite figure out, or at least not until we heard our van hit Bob’s car with a sickening crack.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tim. ‘I guess he meant for us to stop.’

  Bob looked disgusted when we emerged from the car full of apologies, and waved an angry hand in our direction as though he didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘It’s just a fucking scratch,’ he said, with a face like thunder.

  The house itself was set atop a cliff, a soaring Vesuvius. We had expected a winding, crumbling staircase, cut into the earth, bracketed by a wooden barrier. It was difficult to understand why Bob was still so fat given that he had to climb Mount Everest every day.

  Bob pointed again.

  ‘Get in,’ he said.

  It was a small, roofless cage, about waist high, big enough for three or four children to play inside comfortably. We looked to Bob for further instructions, helpless tourists.

  ‘It’s a fucking inclinator!’ he snapped, losing patience. ‘And it takes us up to the house. Now get in.’

  Tim picked up Bob Ellis the dog and we obediently stepped into the cage. Bob squeezed his considerable frame in front of us, causing an already uncomfortable arrangement to become borderline unbearable. We were like the cast of The Magic Roundabout stuck in a wheelie bin. Bob pressed a button and we jolted forward aggressively. The impact was such that I flew backwards and accidentally pressed the emergency stop lever. We shuddered to an immediate halt.

  ‘What happened?’ said Bob.

  I felt his temper rising. I gestured wordlessly at the controls.

  Bob started up the machine again. Again, I was flung back and managed to inadvertently bring everything to a stop.

  Ellis was apoplectic. At this point it looked as though we would all die here, in this inclinator, sadly stuck down the bottom of a hill. Tim had his face buried in the dog’s fur.

  ‘When I push this button,’ Bob explained, as though speaking to a pair of deaf children, ‘we will move forward. If you are able to . . . try not to turn the fucking thing off again.’

  The inclinator itself, when it got going, moved at a pace best described as ‘leisurely’. We were essentially in a motorised wheelchair on an angle. Two men, a dog, and a chastened superfan. When we finally reached the summit—thank christ, thank christ—Bob Ellis the dog leaped from Tim’s arms, impatient to explore. We watched her fondly and mutely for a moment as she sniffed the grass. Which did then seem an opportune moment for her to splay her back legs out and propel herself across Bob’s lawn, rubbing her itchy backside with what appeared to be an enormous amount of care.

  This went on for a very long time. Bob Ellis the man watching Bob Ellis the dog cheerily wiping her rectum all over his otherwise impeccable lawn.

  Bob turned to us. He looked angry. To be fair, he always looked angry. But at this point he looked slightly angrier than normal.

  ‘Is your dog a fool?’ he asked with relish, not waiting to hear the answer, just stomping indoors and announcing to his wife that the guests were here, was the kettle on and could we all just have a nice cup of tea.

  Tim whispered urgently for Bob Ellis the dog to perhaps abandon her ablutions and act normal, or something along those lines. She trotted over obediently, tail wagging, looking up at us to see what fun we had to offer.

  As we stood together, wondering what other ways we could fuck up this weekend, we looked out at the vista. It was a startlingly gorgeous view. Glimmering water, distant green islands. The hum of speedboats being commandeered by their playboy owners drizzled upwards. Foliage sighed in that thick, erotic, coastal way. It felt as though we looked down on all the world, and all the world was a sunny playground for the well-heeled set.

  ‘Probably the best view in the country,’ Ellis said importantly, reappearing by our sides, not looking at it, just squinting at us to ascertain our reactions. I felt sick with anxiety, not wanting to say the wrong thing. We had already dented his car and broken his inclinator. Then our dog had run her anus all over his lawn.

  Bob’s thundery rages were of biblical proportions. I wasn’t sure I would cope if he suddenly unleashed one on me.

  We ate well, a vegetable curry and poppadoms and rice, everybody politely murmuring over the fact that Annie had gone out of her way to make vegan food. Ellis was distracted, or seemed to be, and ate in great gulps, shovelling curry into his mouth. He spilled raita across the table.

  ‘You can rest after lunch,’ he said. ‘And later we’ll go to the movies.’

  Everything had a surreal edge. I was unable to relax, wanting to say something so impressive and astute that Bob would look up from his food with admiring eyes. It was impossible to get a word in most of the time, so we mostly sat and listened.

  Bob and Annie’s daughter, Jenny, we were told, was elsewhere in the house, mourning the recent death of a friend. ‘You probably won’t see her,’ Annie whispered to us, but I did, running into her later that afternoon in the kitchen. Jenny and I were the same age. She looked at me with open curiosity as the dog sat at my feet.

  ‘So this,’ she said slowly, ‘is Bob Ellis the dog.’

  I imagined what this moment must feel like from her perspective. I pictured waking up in my own parents’ house and walking into another room to find a young woman standing and grinning at me in a friendly yet demented fashion.

  ‘This is my dog, Alan Hardy!!’ she would exclaim with enthusiasm, before rolling up her sleeve to show me the tattoo she had designed inspired by my father’s myriad acting roles.

  Jenny and I stared at each other. I have rarely felt so foolish.

  ‘Well,’ I said with forced cheer. ‘Better go see what Tim’s up to.’

  Bob insisted we go to the local cinema to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona. He was seeing it for the ninth time. ‘It’s a work of genius,’ he kept repeating, ‘complete genius. Woody Allen is back in form.’ I loved this about Bob; that he would enjoy something so much he wanted to share it with everybody he met, even strangers. Three years later he would take me to see The Wharf Revue. It would be my first visit and his fourteenth.

  During the film, Bob cackled and sighed, muttered admiringly, and heckled. He kept looking over to us, ensuring that we were gaining as much enjoyment from it as he was, that we too were appreciating the nuances and craftsmanship. After the film we went for dinner at the local Chinese, and Ellis held court over the Lazy Susan, spilling wine and sweet and sour sauce across the pape
r tablecloth as he reiterated exactly why the movie worked and why we should be duly awed and why Julia Gillard was a cunt.We had gelato after the meal and strolled the deserted Palm Beach promenade. An empty Burger Rings packet danced past our feet and flung itself in a suicide mission against a rock. Ellis was too drunk to drive so Tim commandeered the Volvo back to the house.

  That night we sat for hours, eating liqueur chocolates liqueurs and drinking port and listening to Bob rail about the state of the New South Wales Labor party, John Howard, the sorry demise of Kim Beazley. Pet subjects, and we had heard most of them before, but we sat and soaked it up anyway. It was like a free concert. Ellistock.

  Tim eventually announced he was going to bed. It was 2 am. Bob reached for the port again. I wanted to stay and hear more, to have some one-on-one time with that wonderful mind. Tim nudged me.

  ‘You’re probably tired too,’ he said meaningfully.

  Those knowing looks other women had given me when I proclaimed my devotion to Bob suddenly came sharply into focus. If Bob made a pass at me when we were alone I would have fallen apart. This was not how I saw his role in my life. I wanted to give him space and stay out of his way, just so he wouldn’t be tempted in the first place. This was not a sexual relationship. This was an exchange of ideas.

  In bed, I whispered with Tim.

  ‘He wouldn’t have done anything. He was too pissed.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure. I saw him trying to look down your dress.’

  ‘He was probably just drunk and cross-eyed. He’s not like that anymore. He’s not like that with me.’

  There had always been, I suppose, the question of sex.

  ‘Are you going to fuck him?’ somebody had asked me once.