by Peter Barry
‘Seen enough, son?’ His father had turned round to look at him. He nodded. He couldn’t wait to go home. ‘Don’t forget what you saw today.’ He sounded serious, almost grave. ‘There’s going to be a lot more of that kind of thing in the future. The world is splitting into us and them, into the haves and the have nots.’ Hugh stared at him, not understanding, but not caring to ask either.
One evening around that time, they were watching the News, and they showed footage of a riot. It was like watching TV when he was very young. There were the white people, who were in towns or offices and always well dressed, and there were the black people who appeared outside pits or in the countryside – not real countryside, because there were no trees or grass or flowers, but on wasteland, sometimes with mean looking houses with no lights glimpsed in the background. The black people frightened him. They were obviously the baddies. They looked evil and they always shouted, never spoke calmly or rationally like the white people. He hoped the white people would win because they looked more like his own family, and they were just … well, nicer.
‘This is terrible,’ said his mother, tutting into her teacup. ‘To think it’s come to this.’
‘It’s an excellent education for the boy. He can see how the government’s to blame for all this. What else can the miners do?’ his father was saying. ‘A man has to stand up and fight for his job if he wants to keep it nowadays. There’s no other way. If you don’t fight, they push you to one side like you’re an irrelevance.’
He went and sat on his father’s lap. ‘I don’t know what the answer is, Hughie, but I know that’s not the answer. There’s more to life than making money. I’ve said it to you before. That’s what this is all about: profits. The Coal Board’s putting profits before their workers. And you can see where that leads us.’
He looked up at his dad’s intense face, trying hard to understand what was being said to him. ‘That woman – yes, that woman there, Mrs. Thatcher,’ stabbing his finger at the flickering screen, forcing him to turn and look, ‘She has a lot to answer for. She goes about it the wrong way, makes it all about confrontation.’ But he didn’t make what he meant any clearer, nor did he explain who the woman was, at least not on that occasion.
His mother said, ‘But the unions are too strong, James. It’s not right they hold the country to ransom like this. Someone has to stand up to them.’
His father shook his head as if his mum couldn’t possibly understand such a complicated subject and sighed, ‘It’s not that simple, but I’ll give you one thing. That Scargill fellow has got out of hand and someone has to do something about him.’ His mum nodded, pleased that she’d got the answer to at least part of the puzzle. ‘But throwing thousands of people out of work, taking away their livelihoods and the bread and butter off their tables, that’s not the way to go about it. That’s all I’m saying.’
His father hugged him. ‘It’s important to treat people like you yourself want to be treated, Hughie. It’s a fundamental. Doing right by other people, that’s basic decency. That’s Christianity.’
In his dad’s eyes at least, that was the end of the discussion. It was quite clear cut, and he didn’t want to spend any more time talking about it. Especially with his wife, who didn’t understand about these things, or with his son who was obviously too soft.
* * *
She came downstairs the next morning before he left for work. Her appearance was unexpected. He thought she would have gone out of her way to avoid him as much as possible over the next few days.
‘I called Jodie last night. Tim and I are going to spend Easter with her.’
‘I’m not going to be at the office all weekend, you know.’
‘I don’t care whether you are or not. Tim and I don’t want you to be at the office at all over Easter. It’s supposed to be a public holiday. We were both looking forward to going camping, especially your son. But seeing you’re now not going to take us, we have to make our own arrangements.’
He was aware of Tim sitting at the table next to him, in his pyjamas, wide-eyed, looking from his mother to his father in turn. ‘I think you’re overreacting.’
‘Well, I don’t, Hugh. If you’re not going to be here for us, it’s only reasonable that we spend our holiday elsewhere.’
He hated it when she called him by his Christian name. He knew it was her way of showing her displeasure.
‘We camping, mummy?’ A little voice, the words spoken low over the cereal bowl.
‘You’ll have to ask your father that, little one.’ And she left the room.
He reached out and held his son’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to go camping another day, Timmy.’
‘Why, daddy?’
‘Daddy has to work. But we’ll go camping soon, I promise.’
A little later, he left for the office.
7
He persuaded her to let him take them to Neutral Bay in the car. It was the morning of Good Friday. He thought that particularly appropriate, as he now saw himself, without much difficulty, nailed to a cross of some kind. He’d drop them at Jodie’s place, go into the office, then pick them up on Easter Monday. And before they left home on the Friday, the Easter Bunny would visit, instead of on the Sunday. Hunting for Easter eggs had been a part of his childhood, and he was determined that Tim experience the thrill, too. And he wanted to be present when that happened.
‘You’re being ridiculous. He’s far too young to understand the Easter Bunny.’
‘He understands chocolate all right, so the Easter Bunny shouldn’t prove too great a leap after that. Anyway, it’s important to have rituals in childhood, we’ve always agreed on that.’
So early on Friday morning, before Tim was up, he hid twenty miniature eggs around the garden, all at about his son’s height: in a flower pot, on the garden gnome, on the low wall that ran round one of the flowerbeds, on the seat of the swing, and in a toy boat floating in the paddling pool. Tim quickly picked up the idea of what he was supposed to do and ran squealing back and forth across the garden, followed by his admiring parents and a wildly excited Dante. There were soon chocolate smudges all around Tim’s mouth.
‘That’s six you’ve found now. But you’re not to eat any more, Timmy. You’ll make yourself sick.’ The small boy ignored this warning and ran off.
Hugh followed his son around the garden with false enthusiasm, shouting out as each egg was discovered, but in fact only wanting to lie down in the middle of the lawn, hug his son to his chest, and cry.
‘You’re getting warmer … You’re very warm now, Timmy … Look up, look up!’
He considered drowning himself in the paddling pool. He wondered if it was deep enough. It depended on how determined he was, he guessed. That would teach her a lesson, to find him face down amongst the plastic ducks and boats. Unaware of her husband’s pain or, more likely, not caring, Kate went back into the house to finish packing. Half an hour later he was helping load everything into the car, finding it hard to believe how much she needed for only three nights away.
* * *
Hugh discovered early in his career that, in at least one respect, advertising agencies are little different to other businesses. They win or lose clients, not on merit or a lack of it, but on a whim, a personal idiosyncrasy, the most irrational and non-commercial of reasons. It might be a case of the agency’s chairman having been to school with the company’s chairman, or the company’s managing director meeting this ‘really great bloke – runs an advertising agency’ on holiday in Byron Bay, or at his golf club on the Mornington Peninsula, or at some business luncheon in the city. It might be because one agency wines and dines the company’s marketing director in more expensive restaurants, or more regularly, than his own agency can afford to do.
Hugh had learnt about the history of Bauer and The Alpha Agency soon after joining the company. It had been a case of the then chairman of the advertising agency, back in the 1980s, long before Russell bought his way into it,
being a neighbour of the man who held the Bauer franchise in Australia. Although both chairmen had long since retired, the account, despite having grown substantially, was never moved to another agency, and the various marketing directors who joined the business over the years simply took it as understood that management was content for their account to stay where it was. The account was virtually dormant, even the famous strap line, Bauer. The Synonym for Power, which had been around since the days of the company’s legendary Le Mans wins, remained untouched. So Bauer remained parked at Alpha because, in the main, everything ran smoothly. The decision was certainly not part of a well thought out corporate strategy.
In the 21st century, things were very different. Hugh knew that every agency in town, and even a few interstate, wanted to get their hands on the prestigious account. Dieter received letters or phone calls from interested parties almost every week. He met up with a few of these suitors, and let it be known to Alpha that he’d met up with them, sometimes going so far as to leave their presentations on top of his desk when Hugh or Murray visited his office. He liked to keep them on their toes. (Murray had once picked up one of these documents, flicked through it casually then, with a look of disdain on his face and the comment ‘I’m not allowing you to waste your time with this bunch of cowboys, Dieter,’ dropped it into the wastepaper basket. The marketing director had laughed. ‘You are right, Murray, they are cowboys.’) But despite his somewhat stolid Germanic demeanour, Dieter enjoyed eating out in fashionable restaurants and being made to feel important. He was not averse to being fawned over. So every now and again he’d allow one of these wooers to take him out for lunch or dinner, even though he had no intention of getting into bed with them.
Looked at objectively, it was difficult to justify The Alpha Agency holding onto the account. They didn’t do innovative creative work, although it could be argued that their client didn’t want, and wouldn’t have bought, innovative creative work. Dieter Braun, CEO of Bauer Australia, preferred to emulate the advertising his company ran elsewhere in the world. This consisted of sweeping three-quarter view shots of one of his cars being driven through a fantastic landscape or cityscape, with beautiful people in fashionable clothes getting into or out of the vehicle. Dieter calculated that his job was safe if he could persuade Alpha to stay close to those images and, fortunately, this had never been difficult to do. Murray Wheeler had once gone so far as to say, ‘Dieter, you know us; we can do whatever kind of work you want. Just tell us what you’re after.’ Hugh had cringed with embarrassment at the unprofessionalism of this statement. Of course, if the agency had been asked to defend its position, they’d have replied that they always sold their quota of cars – around eight hundred in the previous year, nationally, and that figure had been increasing year by year for as long as anyone could remember. An agency intent on stealing the account could have pointed out that all luxury European sports cars had sold well over the last ten years, but that didn’t mean that they themselves would be unable to improve the company’s sales statistics.
The Alpha Agency was like every other advertising agency in town: it changed when it was involved in a presentation for a new piece of business. Everything moved up a gear. The sense of excitement was palpable. The target company was analysed, discussed, agonised over, and laboured on behalf of, from the early hours of the morning until late into the night. All-nighters were common, too. Once the client had selected an agency, however, the account never received such attention again and never had so many talented people working on it – at least not until the day the account was again put up for pitch. Hugh always had a problem with this strategy. Surely an agency should work at the same intensity for its existing clients, not simply raise performance levels when they hoped to ensnare a new client? So he didn’t have a problem when the new creative director, Simon Hogg, placed his Timberland booted feet on top of Hugh’s desk, his hands behind his fashionably cut, luxuriantly blond hair, and informed him that the agency had to treat this presentation like a pitch. That was fine with Hugh. In fact his work load wouldn’t be particularly onerous this time around because a creative brief had already been instigated for the last campaign, for the one done by Fiona. There was no strategy to be discussed, the research findings existed and had been dissected, and there was, so far as anyone knew, no other agency to compete against. Hugh’s task was simply to brief the new creative director, answer any questions he might have, and put together a new presentation document which, although similar to the previous one, would have to diverge from it slightly, if only to justify the new creative approach.
But he still had to be available in case Simon had any questions, and this meant working as late as the creative director – and he worked very late. Being in a new job, he needed to impress, and being in a new country, he didn’t have a family to go home to. He was living in a hotel, and he was unaware of the fact he was spoiling Hugh’s long weekend.
Only Simon, three other senior creatives – two art directors and a writer – and Hugh were in the agency over Easter. They worked on the same floor, but on different sides of the building. Corridors of empty, dark offices lay between the creative department and the account executives.
Sarah had volunteered to come into the office and help Hugh with the presentation, but he refused her offer. ‘It’s not necessary. I can manage. There’s no point both of us having our weekend ruined. But thank you.’
When Hugh was summoned to the creative director’s office to answer a question or clarify some marketing point, sheets of A2 paper, covered in drawings or hastily scribbled lines – often just one in the middle of an otherwise blank sheet – would be ostentatiously turned face down on the desks. They were saying, ‘You’re only a suit, and we’re not going to let you see our precious ideas until we’re ready to reveal them to you. When that time finally comes, you will be so privileged.’ This pleased, rather than upset, Hugh. On the rare occasions he did catch a glimpse of a line or a visual it was so incomprehensible or, in his opinion, so off-brief, that his heart sank at the prospect of having to try and sell it to Dieter. For the first time ever, he had no desire to become involved in the creative process. He didn’t wish to be put on the spot to either give the nod to, or argue against, some off-the-wall concept. He would leave that to Russell. He’d initiated the new campaign, so it was up to him to support and sell it.
* * *
On Easter Monday he picked up Kate and Tim from Jodie’s house in Neutral Bay. John King was also there. Because they’d all just got back from a walk, he was forced to sit and have a cup of tea while Kate organised the gathering of their belongings. At some point, when he was in the sitting room making small talk with John, Jodie shouted through from the kitchen, in what he presumed was meant to be a jocular fashion, ‘Hugh, how can you force my best friend to live in the back of Bourke!’ He guessed they’d been discussing Stanwell Park over the weekend, and what a bastard he was making his family live there. It didn’t put him in a good frame of mind. At least Tim was glad to see him, sitting on his lap, hugging him silently but intently, whereas Kate had donned this air of fake bonhomie and cheerfulness, as if they’d never argued and it was totally normal for a mother and child to celebrate the long Easter weekend on one side of town while the husband and father was on the other. He almost wished he was back at the office.
On the drive south Kate told him about going out for coffee in Willoughby Lane, where – ‘You remember that Italian with the fruit and vegetable shop? Well, he recognised me, and he was shouting, “bella, bella!” and he gave me this absolutely beautiful peach and kissed my hand.’ She told him about having lunch with their old friends, Pete and Sue, on Easter Day, and how ‘Pete was quite hilarious, having everyone in stitches all afternoon. I’ve never laughed so much in my life.’ And, ‘Yes, I’m sure they asked after you. I can’t remember to be honest.’ On the Saturday, ‘We went to see the Impressionists exhibition at the Art Gallery.’ He tried not to become irritated by the fake enthusiasm
in her voice. ‘Was it good?’ He raised his voice an octave in the hope of sounding interested.
‘It was fantastic. So inspiring! I think it’s the best art exhibition I’ve ever seen.’
‘Really?’
‘Really! And we joined a tour and, honest, you learn so much from those people, those guides. They’re incredibly knowledgeable, they really are. About the artists, the period, the composition of different paintings and, oh I don’t know, so many things.’
‘That’s terrific.’
‘It was really fantastic, Hugh; really inspiring. I can’t wait to get back to my own painting now.’
He also heard how they’d done the walk from Manly to Wellings Reserve, and the weather had been glorious and Tim had so much fun splashing in the water and messing about on the sand – ‘Didn’t you, darling?’ spoken over her shoulder to the back seat. It was, in short, made clear to Hugh that their old North Shore suburb had been so exciting and so much fun compared to … Compared to where? It took some time for him to work it out … Could Kate possibly be comparing Crows Nest to Stanwell Park, he wondered? He wasn’t tempted to ask if his guess was correct, but he did notice how his hands no longer rested on the steering wheel. They clenched it.
When they arrived home, he said he was going for a run. ‘Do you have to? You haven’t seen us for days.’ He ignored the look of disbelief on her face. ‘I have to clear my head. I’ve been stuck in that office for four days. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to get some fresh air.’ This wasn’t true. He’d been for a run each morning over the weekend, before heading off to the office. But he felt angry with his wife, maybe because she’d had such a good time over Easter when he’d been obliged to work, or simply because she wasn’t paying enough attention to him. It made him want to be alone, even though he’d been alone for days.
‘We never see you. If you’re not working, you’re running. Or doing DIY. It’s really not good enough.’ She sounded both exasperated and plaintive.