Drawn Out

by Tom Scott

  Lange was the last of twelve people seeking the Labour nomination for the safe seat. At the end of the long night, the chair of the meeting introduced him as the man who’d had the longest wait. ‘And I’ve got the biggest weight!’ he boomed. The hall erupted in cheers and laughter. Mike Moore, who was also seeking the nomination, whispered to his wife, Yvonne, ‘It’s all over, he’s got it …’

  The man who would eventually defeat Muldoon became a Member of Parliament because of him. In true Shakespearian fashion, Muldoon’s dark deed set in motion events that would lead to his eventual downfall.

  Two weeks after the Royal Tour had ended, Muldoon was scheduled to open National’s by-election campaign in Mangere. Ian Cross never visited Parliament, but quite by chance that very afternoon I ran into him strolling down a corridor with some cabinet ministers. On the spur of the moment, I said I really should cover the Prime Minister’s speech that night. Not ideally placed to refuse, Ian consented and two hours later I was on a flight to Auckland and a short cab ride from the Mangere hall.

  All I remember from the meeting is that Muldoon was more bellicose than normal and when a young Samoan reporter, Fraser Folster, crept across the stage to adjust some recording gear, the muttering and hostility from the Pākehā audience was obvious. Even more painful to witness was Fraser’s acute discomfort and embarrassment at this reaction. At the close of the meeting I caught another cab, to St Mary’s Bay in Auckland, and spent the night with Helen. The next day I returned to Wellington and with a heedless regard for the consequences pulled the plug on my marriage and my Listener column—sending my life and the lives of others into free-fall.

  HELEN AND HER THREE CHILDREN, Emily, Jacob and Ned, had been heading for England when I arrived in their lives. I dragged them down to Wellington to live in a tiny, squalid rented flat in Mount Victoria, but their trip to stay with Helen’s dad, Michael Forlong, a successful documentary film-maker now living in Surrey, couldn’t be delayed any longer. I decided to tag along.

  Going overseas was still a big deal. Burton Silver and Peter Hayden organised a surprise farewell party. People assembled at Burton’s quaint Scorching Bay cottage and he led a convoy of cars on a magical mystery tour around the Miramar Peninsula to Shelly Bay, then still an air-force base whose gates normally closed at ten, but Burton persuaded them to leave them open. He herded everyone onto a jetty where a coastal trader was waiting, with more guests hiding under the hatches. Burton, who combines comic genius and lateral thinking with meticulous preparation, handed out souvenir boxes of matches emblazoned TOM SCOTT CRUISES. There was music, food and wine. It was a balmy, starry night. Out on the water we passed a Japanese fishing boat at anchor and Ian Fraser yelled out, ‘What about some squid pro quo?’ which we all thought was hugely jolly.

  I was quite overcome that Burton and Peter had gone to such elaborate lengths on my behalf until I detected a mood swing and a swelling mutiny below decks. The more militant of the feminists in our midst had gathered to discuss the unforgivable misogyny of Burton not including Helen’s name on the matchboxes—it was thoughtless, insensitive, typical of our patriarchal society and bordered on a war crime. No, it was worse than a war crime!

  I wanted to bring Shaun on the trip, but quite rightly Christine thought he’d been through enough upheaval, plus she didn’t want to disrupt his schooling. Not that the latter would have mattered—he was super bright in his own singular way. One dusk when a friend was loudly admiring a sinking sun, six-year-old Shaun coughed politely at her elbow and offered a gentle correction. ‘Actually, the sun is not sinking, Claire. It stays in one place. The earth is rotating, creating that impression.’

  I DIDN’T ENJOY ENGLAND. PARTLY because I was missing Shaun terribly, and partly because it was bleak and freezing in the terrace house in Whitstable by the sea, it was bleak and freezing in the apartment block nestled amongst Oxford’s dreaming spires, and it was bleak and freezing in the Georgian manor house set amongst skeletal trees in flat Surrey countryside. The common denominator seemed to be clanking Califonts, damp sheets and burnt toast.

  Phil Melchior was working for Reuters and over some boozy lunches he introduced me to his Fleet Street chums. Two newspapers were interested in hiring me. The pay was pitiful and I could be a writer or a cartoonist, but not both. I wanted to be both. I submitted samples of my work to Punch, the once legendary, now deceased weekly humour and satire magazine. I got a letter from the late, great Alan Coren, whose brilliant columns were the only enjoyable thing about sitting in a dentist’s waiting room, in which he offered me a job. I was elated—but not because I wanted to work there. I didn’t. I just wanted proof that I was good enough to do so. It meant I could go home. My homesickness was crippling.

  But first there was a trip down the Grand Union canal, which I enjoyed despite the bitter cold. In the absence of roads, motor vehicles and other signs of civilisation we glided along languid waterways, down staircases of locks and through serene landscapes that seemingly hadn’t changed for centuries. Then it was off to the south of France in a swaying, groaning campervan to where Helen’s sister Debbie, her partner Roy and their two children were living in a stone fort atop the Île du Levant off the coast of the Riviera, near Toulon.

  Before we left I went into Michael’s study to phone Shaun on his sixth birthday. There was no answer from Christine’s house. I rang around her friends, mindful that Maggie, Michael’s second wife, would be timing me on a stopwatch in the next room. I got uncomfortable, cagey answers from everyone I spoke to—Shaun was fine, they just weren’t sure of his precise whereabouts. I widened my search and finally got to speak to him. He was staying with neighbours. His quavering voice broke my heart. I told him I would be home soon and he was relieved. It turned out Christine had gone on another trip to China. I got off the phone and dissolved in tears recounting this to Helen. She said I didn’t really care about Shaun—I was crying for myself.

  It was one of those cockpit-warning moments—‘Whoop! Whoop! Pull up! Pull up! Low terrain! Low terrain!’ There was nothing to be done. Helen was pregnant with Sam—one of the great joys of my life along with darling Rosie, the daughter Helen and I had next, and Will, Averil’s beautiful boy who feels like mine as well, and of course big, quirky Shaun, a constant source of astonishment and laughter. They have all grown into sensible, caring, considerate, creative, amusing adults, curious about the world around them and their obligations to it. I blame their mothers.

  I went to France counting the days until I could return to Aotearoa. I don’t tan, and even if I did the nudist beaches on the Île du Levant were frequented by aging British homosexuals. As they were about to leave the surf they turned their backs to the sands and worked frantically on their genitals until they approached porn-star dimensions. I couldn’t compete with that, and if I tried it could easily have been misinterpreted. I didn’t want the embarrassment of being hit on by some perfectly decent gay bloke who through no fault of his own got the wrong idea—or worse still, being completely ignored by the loneliest homosexual on the beach, who averted his gaze and shuddered when I waddled past.

  Instead I found a shady spot on the stony ramparts and wrote the first draft of my second book, Overseizure, a mock travel diary that I also illustrated with ink and pencil shading. Published by Whitcoulls, it sold very well and was reprinted several times to meet demand. A character not dissimilar to Michael Forlong featured prominently—and not always in a flattering light.

  His first wife, Elizabeth, Helen and Debbie’s mum, an elegant and beautiful lady, came to stay on the island with us. Elizabeth could be a prickly flower and easy to offend but I grew very fond of her, and she of me. After dinner in the cool of the evening, when I regaled everyone with the work in progress, Elizabeth led the laughter—which gave me permission of sorts to continue.

  WHEN WE RETURNED TO NEW ZEALAND we lived for a time with the brilliant, revolutionary, vastly entertaining architect Ian Athfield and his gorgeous, spirited wife Claire, a gift
ed interior designer in her own right, in their extraordinary cement block and white plaster Greek village of a home slipping and a-sliding, ducking and a-diving down a Khandallah hillside above the Hutt motorway and Wellington harbour. In the distinctive tower with its bulb and round windows for eyes, I finished the illustrations for Overseizure, and it was launched lower down the hill in the Khandallah Arms, a drab cube of a house to which Ian had added a double verandah and dazzlingly transformed it into a Wild-West saloon. Pooling our resources, Helen and I were able to afford a half-renovated house in Wadestown backing onto the town belt. There was a tennis court tucked up in the pines. Friends with children the same age as ours lived within easy walking distance. And I returned to the Listener.

  When hiring me, the new editor, Tony Reid, made a point of telling me that circulation had gone up when I was away. I knew I was home. Ed Hillary told me that after climbing Everest in 1953, walking down London streets, cabbies and pedestrians would yell out, ‘Congratulations, Ed! You’ve done very well for your country!’ Back in New Zealand people would yell out, ‘Congratulations Ed. You’ve done very well for yourself.’

  In my absence, Karen Jackman wrote a splendid column on politics for the Listener and I played no part in the coverage of the 1978 election—save for participating in a live television interview on election night while attending a Wadestown party.

  The reporter was Simon Walker, who had recently been called a ‘smart alec’ in a testy studio exchange with Prime Minister Rob Muldoon. Simon’s crime was to call Muldoon ‘Prime Minister’ with such mock respect it was obvious he didn’t consider him worthy of the label. Simon went on to work for David Lange, British Prime Minister John Major and Buckingham Palace. When Her Majesty, unaccountably immune to the charms of the Sultans of Swing, decided to forego a Dire Straits concert at the Albert Hall she lent the royal box to Simon and whomever he wished to include. I was in town editing a documentary on Ed Hillary for Channel 4 in the UK and made the cut. At interval we exited a grand rear door and crossed a wide corridor into a chandeliered reception hall where liveried staff treated us as if Her Majesty were in attendance, gliding amongst overwhelmed guests with silver trays laden with champagne and canapés. Forget the mud and overflowing toilets of Woodstock and Glastonbury—this is how you attend a rock concert!

  On election night 1978, despite Labour winning most of the popular vote, National won most of the seats. For a while early in the evening it looked like a close-run thing as Muldoon’s majority in the House was reduced from seventeen seats to nine. My live-to-air interview with Simon Walker, who looked about twelve, went as follows.

  SIMON: Here’s a man who must be disappointed with the result.

  ME: I was worried satirists would go out of business. It was touch and go there for a while. George Chapman was dousing himself and his wife with petrol outside the bunker, and Muldoon was rolling cyanide capsules around in his mouth, but they managed to hold on.

  SIMON: So you’ll be back in business next year?

  ME: I’ll be back in business next year.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BREAKING BAD

  I WAS BACK IN BUSINESS next year. In 1979 I got a bit careless. An article I wrote on the PSIS started the worst month I experienced on the Hill. The piece is of no particular interest now, except for the fact I was sued for libel by Muldoon as a consequence. Some of the key details were incorrect. Journalists shouldn’t make mistakes—especially when writing about heads of government.

  The first I knew of my transgression was when Kevin Hyde, my lawyer friend, came round late at night looking sick with worry. I thought he was about to tell me his marriage was on the rocks so I poured him a huge whisky. He took a large slug then told me that the PM had retained the services of the much-feared Des Dalgety of the Wellington law firm Bell Gully, with the express intention of hitting me with a writ for defamation. I was terrified at first but this soon subsided into callow self-pity. I didn’t mind defaming the PM so much—politicians must expect that sort of thing. I figured he would soon get over it, if indeed he was ever hurt to begin with. After all, he was only demanding $10,000 in damages, which meant either (a) he felt sorry for me, or (b) his reputation wasn’t too severely impugned, as (c) my own reputation was so low any charge of libel from whatever source would be hard to sustain. But I did feel bad about my editor. I had let Tony Reid down.

  He was very decent about it at first, which only made me feel worse, but as the plot thickened he took to shaking his head sadly, rolling his eyes at the ceiling and muttering darkly about things being pretty grim on the third-floor executive row.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I would enquire nervously.

  ‘Don’t ask, pal, don’t ask. Trust me. You don’t want to know.’

  Ignoring my feeble suggestion that we defend the matter in court, the Listener suspended my column one week and published a full apology in its place. Being only the second defendant, being in disgrace, and with the BCNZ paying all the costs, I was not consulted on the wording—which was largely the work of the Prime Minister’s people anyway. BCNZ’s default response to litigation was capitulation and in this instance I didn’t have much choice. Still, I winced when I saw the printed grovelling apology. I took some comfort from the fact that while they were at it they at least refrained from blaming me for the Great Fire of London.

  The more immediate problem was that the National Party annual conference was about to begin in Christchurch. Tony told me he would understand if I preferred to give it a miss. It was tempting, but there was no escaping the ignominy. It would be better to get it over and done with.

  The joshing began shortly after I landed at Christchurch airport—waiting for my baggage, dozens of National Party delegates wandered across to chat.

  ‘I guess Rob got you there, Scotty?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Gidday, Tom, got ya cheque book on ya, mate?’

  ‘No, the bank confiscated it—I’m ten thousand dollars overdrawn.’

  ‘Hey, say something nasty about me next week. I need the money!’

  ‘What a good idea—we could go halves on the damages.’

  And so it continued for most of the weekend. A triumphant Muldoon asked me to stand and take a bow during his speech. I obliged, to great applause. It reached a crescendo the night of their social in the Town Hall. I joined a group of colleagues at one of the bars serving free liquor. We stood in a sullen huddle watching the Nats whirl by in their finery. I had an almost constant stream of people coming up to clap me on the back and wink at me, and I started asking for double whiskies, but somehow, rather than dulling my senses, they seemed to intensify my irritation.

  A group of young Nats sauntered up, saying, ‘I suppose you’re too famous to talk to us.’ An awkward conversation ensued but eventually I asked to be excused as I was with friends.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ sneered the ringleader. ‘Done your bit for the masses! The famous person doesn’t find us interesting enough to talk to! He wants to get back to his famous friends!’ The awkward conversation staggered on a bit longer until I could stand it no more and I turned away, ordering another double whisky. ‘See!’ and ‘Thought so!’ they shouted over my shoulder. The pretty girl behind the counter smiled and shrugged in sympathy.

  Near the end of the evening someone came up and shouted in my ear, ‘Want to go to a party?’

  ‘Why not?’ I replied.

  ‘Good.’ He beamed. ‘It’s in your room!’ It was news to me but the word had gone out that I was holding a stir of some sort. By this stage I had decided that the pretty girl who’d been pouring me whisky all night was my only real friend in the whole world. I enquired casually if she would like to come to a party. She smiled sweetly and to my secret relief she said she couldn’t—her husband was at home babysitting the kids.

  When I got back to Noah’s Hotel there were already a dozen people in my room. Someone had got a key from the desk. As I forced my way into the crush I was hail
ed loudly. No one had brought grog. I was obliged to be a good sport and ring room service for some whisky, gin and beer.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ brayed a red-faced young Nat in a checked sports coat and cravat. ‘We’re going to take a collection.’ They did. It barely covered half of the bill. The crowd swelled. To escape the din, I went out into the corridor, where Ian Fraser and some journalists were talking quietly and swapping yarns. It was decidedly more pleasant out there, laughing and passing around the wine.

  The scrum in my room didn’t begin to abate until some time after three. What I didn’t know then was that the cabinet minister Hugh Templeton and his wife Natasha had the room on one side of me, and another cabinet minister, Police Minister Air Commodore Frank Gill and his wife, were on the other side. Natasha apparently begged Hugh repeatedly to get up and complain about the noise, but he remained in bed, indirectly contributing to the catastrophe his intervention might have prevented.

  When the crowd thinned, I returned to my dishevelled room. There were only a handful of people left, including senior cabinet minister Jim McLay, who I have always got on well with, and his first wife, Jenny. She was sprawled languidly across my bed and appeared most reluctant to leave. I busied myself stacking bottles and glasses and emptying ashtrays while people thanked me profusely as they left. Finally, there was only the BCNZ’s Neil Roberts left. Neil was a bit the worse for wear—just minutes before he’d had to be stopped unwinding a fire hose in the corridor. It seems he’d wanted to wash the last of the stragglers out of my room. He was a decent bloke like that.

  I was moaning about the state of the room when suddenly he barked, ‘Jesus, don’t those young Nats just give you the shits!’ Slumped on a low table I concurred moodily, and looked up to see Neil pluck a heavy black armchair off the carpet and hurl it through the plate-glass window. There was a terrible explosion, followed by another crash as it disintegrated on something far below. We were twelve floors up and a strong, icy wind surged through the splintered wound. Sheer horror left me momentarily paralysed. I was thinking, first a libel suit and now this shit! I came out of my trance when Neil threw the telephone directory out the window and began looking about the room for other missiles.