Tigerland

by Sean Kennedy

  “Thank you.”

  He sounded surprised. And pleased. “You’re welcome. But, boss, are you really sure you want to stop him?”

  If somebody had asked me that question as little as two days ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to. But I had reached a sense of stability since my last couple of heart to hearts with Dec—which only seem to have unravelled him in hindsight. And I didn’t want him to do whatever it was he was planning to do on my behalf, so, yes, I had to try and stop him. Heyward didn’t bother me anymore. Who the fuck was Heyward? Or the people who would be sniggering over the paper as they ate their morning Weet-Bix or Vegemite toast.

  I already had all the people I actually gave a fuck about, and they were all I cared about.

  So I didn’t answer his question. “Thanks, Coby. Speak to you soon.”

  I disconnected the call, and as soon as the doors opened on our lobby, I was off running. Well, my form of running, anyway. I was moving as fast as I could, at least, and I knew I was drawing attention to myself as I zigzagged between the people heading out for their leisurely Sunday brunches or making their way to Etihad Stadium for the footy, as I wasn’t exactly dressed like someone out for a jog. I passed over Webb Bridge to the Docklands studios, the blood pulsing in my temples a soundtrack to my ears. I hoped it wasn’t the sign of an approaching aneurysm.

  I had to stop to catch my breath, and called Coby again.

  “Jesus, Simon, you sound like you’re about to die.”

  “Maybe,” I panted. “But I need a favour.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Well, it’s actually more a favour from Sunita. Security isn’t going to let me in, no matter how good my reason is. Can you please call her and tell her to meet me at reception?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “Thank you,” I said before erupting into a coughing fit that made Coby hang up on me this time in order to save his own eardrums.

  There was a lot of security at the studio. Far more than I would have thought necessary, especially for a Sunday morning, but maybe Sunday morning breakfast show hosts are prone to semi-celebrity stalkers as much as their real celebrity counterparts.

  I pressed the intercom, and the screen lit up with the face of a security guard who looked better suited to be the bouncer outside a nightclub with a clientele of wannabe Melbourne gangsters. “Yes?”

  “I’m here… because I have an appointment,” I puffed. Not exactly true, but if Sunita was meeting me it was close enough.

  “With who?”

  “Sunita.”

  “Sunita who?”

  “Uh….” Good question. “I’ve forgotten her surname. She’s one of the assistants on Before Breakfast.”

  “Name?”

  “Sunita!”

  “No,” he said, as if I was a little bit slow. “Your name.”

  “Simon. Simon Murray.”

  A pause as he looked over his laptop. “Not listed.”

  This was one of those moments where if I was more of a celebrity I could have yelled Don’t you know who I am? But you can’t really use that when your only claim to fame is that you go out with a famous ex-footy player. Even if he did work for the station I was standing outside.

  “Can’t you just call her for me? I’m here with Declan Tyler. He’s appearing on the show this morning.”

  As usual, the mention of Dec’s name brought a more compliant response. “Hang on a minute. I’ll call her.”

  He muted me so I couldn’t hear him, and after he finished his call he came back to me. “Come in.” A buzzer sounded, and the door yielded under my hands, which I only now realised were desperately pressed up against the glass. I must have looked demented from his point of view.

  As I entered the lobby, another bell went off, and a tall woman with immaculately coiffured dark hair emerged from a lift.

  “Simon?” she asked, looking over me with her lip slightly curled in distaste at my dishevelled appearance.

  “Sunita?”

  “Follow me.”

  Was I always this officious at work? No, and I guess that was because I worked at a piddly little community television station. Even in her lowly role as an assistant, Sunita probably thought she was levels ahead of me in power.

  As the lift doors closed, Sunita sighed. “I hope I don’t get fired for this.”

  I thought she was being a little melodramatic. “I’m Dec’s partner. I’m sure guests bring their partners or an entourage all the time.”

  “Yes, but he’s not exactly doing things the normal way, is he? He’s got everyone in an uproar.”

  That was how it seemed when the doors opened again on a claustrophobic hallway where a red studio light was flashing.

  “Be quiet,” Sunita warned me, and I felt like telling her I did know how to act in a studio, seeing I oversaw four television shows of my own as an executive producer. But once again I displayed a saint-like demeanour and bit my tongue.

  Although I did worry about how they would react if I managed to convince Dec to leave with me now, and throw their schedule into further disarray. Would they bar all the windows and doors to try and prevent our escape?

  It didn’t matter anyway.

  I was too late. As we entered the studio and my eyes adjusted to the darkness punctuated by the bright studio lights hanging above the set, I could see Dec was already seated across from one of the Before Breakfast hosts—the annoyingly over-friendly Matt Rice, who I was sure must have been on some form of happy pills in order to pull off that kind of hyperactivity for three hours straight. Or maybe he was just fuelled by cocaine.

  “Shit,” Sunita hissed. “Sorry.”

  We moved a little closer, to where we could hear them. Dec seemed a bit pallid under the lights, although I couldn’t figure out whether it was due to nervousness or maybe not giving them enough time to put him through makeup.

  “You’ve been avoiding the media spotlight ever since Greg Heyward revealed he was gay,” Matt was saying. “And even more so when he revealed that the two of you had a relationship in the past. Was there a particular reason for that?”

  Dec cleared his throat, a sure sign of nervousness. My heart was in my belly, and I think it had slowed to a sluggish rate just barely above “dead.”

  “The truth was, I just thought the past was in the past.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Kind of against my will,” Dec said with a small laugh, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It’s not like we’re holding a gun to your head.”

  “No, I chose to be here.”

  “And I have to ask again, why is that?”

  Wow, did Matt Rice think he was aiming for a Pulitzer or something?

  “I thought it was time to give my own side of the story,” Dec said. “But not for me. For my partner, Simon.”

  Matt Rice laughed. “He’s made a bit of a splash this morning across the headlines, hasn’t he?”

  A number of the crew members laughed around me at the obvious joke. One of them caught my eye, and his own widened at the realisation I was there, and he turned back quickly to watch the show unfolding before him again.

  Horrified, I saw a picture of a wet and bedraggled Jasper and myself crawling out of the Yarra appear on the large screen behind Declan and Matt. As usual, I was grimacing and looking like I was ready to start ripping the head off anyone who approached me. Jasper looked like the poor little victim. Which I guess he was, in a way, but hey, so was I!

  Dec shook his head at the image. I could tell it wasn’t an admonishment of my behaviour, but the network’s for showing it.

  “There are two sides to every story,” Dec said. “There is to that one. Jasper Brunswick—”

  “Who happens to be the co-author of Greg Heyward’s book, correct?” Matt interrupted.

  “Yes, he is. But Jasper bumped into a waiter, and they both started to fall over the railing of the bridge. Simon was trying to grab them, and he was pulled over as well.”

>   “Witnesses say both men were arguing before this happened.”

  “They were… talking, yes.”

  “Heatedly?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t there at that point of time.”

  “Would Jasper back up your version of events, I wonder?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dec said, and he was starting to get a little heated. “Why don’t you have him on tomorrow’s show and ask him? He doesn’t mind the attention.”

  Matt put up his hands as if to surrender, and everybody laughed again.

  Dec, calm down, I pleaded. He’s trying to bait you. Don’t do it.

  “We’ll move past that,” Matt said magnanimously. “But you say you’re here for Simon. Why isn’t he here to speak for himself?”

  I shrank back into the shadows, as if he could see me and try to pull me on stage—or, more likely, I would be exposed by the loyal employees of the show and taken up like a sacrifice to angry gods.

  “Because this whole thing started due to Greg and me. Simon shouldn’t have to be involved.”

  “But he is,” Matt pointed out.

  Dec nodded. “He’s had to put up with a lot being with me. Sometimes he gets a lot of crap thrown at him, even from people close to him, saying they don’t know how he ended up with me, as if he was lucky that he got me. But it’s the other way round.” He paused, and for once Matt didn’t interrupt him or try to prod him along further. “I was lucky getting him. If I hadn’t met him, I don’t know where I would be today. It sounds stupid to say someone brought you to life, but he opened up the world for me. I was in a pretty bad place when I met him, and he was prepared to stay in it with me, and to love me in it regardless.”

  “This pretty bad place,” Matt said, sensing blood in the water, “was it something to do with Heyward?”

  Dec gave him a rueful smile. “I’m not here to tell tales, Matt. But Simon made my life better. Even when circumstances worked against us, especially when I was outed and had to step into the glare of a so-called new life, he was there every time, for every crap moment. When the fans hated him, when the WAGs made it hard for him to first come into our strange world of the AFL, and when I ran away from our problems at times instead of dealing with them—he was still there when I came back.”

  I couldn’t believe he was saying all of this on television, knowing that it would probably be up on YouTube within minutes, and that people all over the country would be dissecting it over the next couple of days as it was picked up by other media outlets.

  And he was doing it for me. He was so reticent and withdrawn in so many ways, and yet when he felt he had to make a point, he did it to the extreme.

  “Simon has been a partner in every sense of the word,” Dec continued. “And when all this stuff started with Greg, and I wanted to maintain what I thought was a dignified silence, just because it was what I thought was best, Simon supported me. Even when Greg made up stuff about him, basically a whole lot of shit—” He faltered. “Uh, guess I can’t say that—”

  “That’s live TV for you.” Matt laughed nervously, looking straight into the camera. “Lucky we have a three second delay just in case this kind of thing happens.”

  “Sorry.” Sheepishly, Dec scratched at his nose. “Anyway, what Greg and Jasper Brunswick were writing was false. And I guess they would think they had their reasons for it, like making it into more of a story the public would like. But it’s not the truth. And Simon has been through hell because of it.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Matt said. “Are you claiming that Greg Heyward lied in his book?”

  “I’m saying he and Jasper wrote their version of events. And that it’s, to put it politely, not the correct one.”

  “That’s a huge claim to make.”

  “It’s also a true one. And I wouldn’t come on this show if I thought I would get caught out in a lie. When I joined the Devils and moved to Tasmania, Greg and I had already been broken up for almost a year, and it was still another six months or so before I met Simon.”

  “That’s very different to what Heyward wrote.”

  Dec shrugged. “It is. I’m not going to keep repeating myself about whether it’s the truth or not. The main thing is I let them say all that stuff without countering it. And I let Simon suffer along with me because of it, just because that was the way I wanted it, but I can’t do that anymore. I have to think of him and put him first.”

  “Do you think the public will believe your side of the story?” Matt asked.

  Dec hesitated for a moment before shrugging. “The public will believe what they want to believe, but I only want to finally be on record saying that 90 percent of what Heyward is saying is crap. And anything he says about Simon is 100 percent bull crap.”

  “Do you think going on the record will end the speculation?”

  “I hope so, because this will probably be the last time I say anything about it.”

  “Really?” Matt asked.

  “Never say never, Matt. But like I said, I hope so. All I wanted was to have the record set straight about Simon. He deserves that at least.”

  “Straight?” Matt asked, unable to resist an obvious dig.

  A tired old joke, but Declan knew he had to play along to keep the media happy. “Figuratively speaking.”

  “So what are your final thoughts on Greg Heyward’s book?”

  I could tell Dec was thinking of a way to be diplomatic, but he also wanted his own point to come across. With a slight shake of the head, he sat back in his chair. “I think he’s a lonely guy who’s still trying to find his way in the world, and it’s going to take some time.”

  Matt nodded in that overly thoughtful way most journalists seem to affect when a camera is on them, especially at the end of an interview. “That was an exclusive from Declan Tyler, regarding the recent controversy about Greg Heyward’s soon-to-be-released memoir Out on the Field. Thank you, Declan.”

  Declan reached across and shook his hand.

  “After the break, the latest news and weather for our show.”

  Commercials were counted down, and Dec rose from his chair, pulling his microphone out of the collar of his T-shirt. He was surrounded by staff, wanting to speak to him, but he glanced away and happened to look to where I was standing behind one of the flats. He brushed off his admirers and walked over to me with a nervous gait that amused me more than anything.

  “I’m not surprised, but how did you find out?” he asked.

  “Coby has friends everywhere. It’s kind of scary.”

  “What’s scary is how fast news spreads in this city.”

  “It’s the information age, baby. And speaking of fast, man, you should have seen me running to get here.”

  “You?” Dec asked incredulously. “Run?”

  “I’m sure I could ask for CCTV footage to prove it to you.”

  “Would it also prove that it was more of a slow jog?”

  He knew me too well. And after what he did this morning, he had proved he loved me too well.

  “Dec, why did you do this?”

  “Did you not hear my interview? I’m sure it’ll be up on YouTube soon if you wanted to recapture the moment.”

  “You know I didn’t ask you to do it.”

  “You didn’t ask. And you didn’t expect,” he agreed. “That’s why I had to do it. For you. Not for me. Not for Heyward, and not to get even with him, or even to shaft Jasper. It was for you.” He reached out and took my hand, swinging it slightly in the space between us. “Nobody wants to hear shit said about the person they love. They will fight to defend them, even if ‘fight’ is in the broadest sense of the word, and it actually means they will go on some cheesy morning show and divulge details of their private life.”

  “And start up the whole media circus again?”

  He shrugged. “So what? We’re used to it. We always get through it. Us against the world, remember?”

  Hoping to hell the cameras wouldn’t turn on us and capt
ure the moment to an audience of one and a half million eating their Vegemite toast, I grabbed Declan and kissed him. His arms encircled me, and I think that he even easily lifted me off the ground slightly, in some romantic comedy cliché clinch. But I didn’t care. It’s usually us against the world, so what the hell?

  Right then, it felt like we were the world alone.

  Overtime

  I WOULD have liked everything to have calmed down after that little spectacle, but Dec’s short interview only helped fan the flames of interest for a while.

  But we felt much better that our word was out, and from there on we felt more at peace. It also helped that Jasper Brunswick backed me up by saying I hadn’t pushed him into the Yarra, so maybe there was hope for him yet. Unfortunately, he still accompanied Heyward on the book tour, and I have no idea what their current relationship is. Strangely enough, for both their sakes, I hope it’s improved and they’re both happy in it. I don’t have high hopes for Heyward, though. Not for a while, anyway.

  He still kept trying to keep his fifteen minutes of fame alive. The book sold well, but was criticised by reviewers and generally perceived to be a one-sided exaggerated version of events with a lot of mistruths thrown in to gain Heyward more sympathy. I am sure Heyward used the massive amounts of money gained by his royalty cheques to dry his eyes over that, though.

  For a while there were talks about a miniseries being made, but the bad reviews and Dec’s refusal to give any support meant they eventually fell through. Life began to settle down again. Trams could be ridden without knowing glances by the other passengers, phones could be answered without dread, and parents no longer asked embarrassing but well-meaning questions about our relationship.

  And it didn’t seem that long until we found ourselves standing at the altar, although it wasn’t in a church but a beautiful outdoors ceremony in the Fitzroy Gardens.

  Not that it was us who were getting married—that’s still illegal and not for our kind. It’s hard not to feel a little resentful on days like these, although you are truly happy for the couple getting hitched. But it’s just wrong. Especially when that man looks so good in a tuxedo.