by Hugh Mackay
Coming from an emotionally tepid family that never went to the theatre, rarely attended movies or read fiction, and heavily censored their son’s television viewing, Linc had few role models to draw on. Lurid tales told by his schoolmates about what girls might be encouraged to do – or to tolerate – had either astonished or disgusted him. Half the stuff he was told about sex provoked giddy disbelief.
Linc’s father was a busy man whose interest in his son had been primarily focused on the task of having Linc educated, as he himself had been, at a good church school – ‘values and discipline,’ his father repeated endlessly, like a politician’s slogan. Then, when Linc’s academic prowess turned out to be somewhat limited, the priority shifted to getting him into a successful commercial career as quickly as possible. He decreed that Linc should nevertheless acquire a university degree as a part-time student: ‘Arts, commerce, something of that ilk,’ he had said rather disparagingly, having been forced to the reluctant conclusion that law and medicine were out of the question.
The brief but very bright highlight of Linc’s school years had been a single term when the ageing school chaplain was on long service leave and his replacement – a bustling young clergyman called John Nelson – took a special interest in Mikey Hunter, then an impressionable fifteen-year-old. The chaplaincy locum was Nelson’s first appointment after graduating from theological college, and he had agreed to do it only on the condition that it would be followed by a three-month study tour of the US, sponsored by the church, allowing him to explore the latest trends in TV evangelism. On the very threshold of his ministry, John Nelson already had grand plans for a career in the media, and he wanted to see, up close, how the experts did it.
He had approached the school job as something to be endured rather than embraced, and was taken by surprise when the boys seemed to respond very warmly to his brisk approach to running chapel services, to the brevity of his sermons, and even to his rather provocative, muscular messages about taking life by the scruff of the neck. (The regular chaplain, a meek and mild fellow, laid great stress on the need for kindness and compassion – his frequent messages about the importance of cooperation, rather than competition, irritated the sports master.)
A couple of weeks into the job, Nelson announced that he was establishing an after-school Life Skills group for any interested boys in Year 9, and Mikey Hunter was the first to sign up. He had no idea what ‘life skills’ might mean, though he rather hoped it would include girls. (It didn’t, except on one occasion when, in response to a direct question about sex, John Nelson had quoted Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, without explanation: ‘It is better to marry than burn.’ The boys puzzled over this for weeks, speculating about the possible meanings of ‘burn’ and concluding it must be something even worse than marriage.) But Mikey was so drawn to the charismatic Nelson it scarcely mattered to him what topics might turn out to be the focus of the group.
The first meeting was devoted to the history, theory and practice of the firm handshake and its essential accompaniment – steady eye contact. By the end of the session, the boys couldn’t wait to find some random adult to shake hands with.
Later sessions included tips on public speaking; how to haggle over the price of something; booking theatre tickets (‘Always call yourself Doctor – you’re more likely to get good seats that way’); how to spit-polish shoes to a high shine; the art of serious conversation (John Nelson was fond of quoting the line: ‘It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt’); how to extract yourself from embarrassing or boring social situations; how to enter a meeting (‘Always arrive a few minutes late – that way, they’ll be anticipating your arrival’); how to decline an invitation without giving offence; how to choose and wrap an inexpensive gift to look like a more expensive one; ‘power seating’ in business and social settings and, with a nod to religion, how to decide on the best place to sit in church. He also ran one session on how to make yourself appear taller, especially for boys of average or, like Mikey Hunter, below-average height.
Mikey was transfixed. He felt as if the secrets of the universe were being revealed to him. The group sessions were generally followed by a ramble through the park adjacent to the school grounds: ‘Time to let off steam, boys. Loosen the limbs, expand the lungs, relax the mind, and reflect on what we’ve been talking about.’ Mikey and one or two other boys always stayed close to Nelson on these rambles, in the hope of receiving more pearls of wisdom from him. They were rarely disappointed.
A recurring theme was the need to unleash your ambition without embarrassment or apology; to define where you wanted to go and how you intended to get there. ‘And it’s never too early to start, boys,’ Nelson would say with the kind of energy that could light a fire in the belly of an eager boy like Mikey Hunter.
Occasionally, Mikey would be the only boy free to take the post-session ramble with the chaplain, and those late-autumn afternoons, tramping through fallen leaves and damp grass, were the happiest he could remember. He felt free to speak his mind in a way he never could at home, or even with the other boys, and he was able to press John Nelson on what he really meant by ambition. He was especially keen to know how a boy might aspire to great success even without a strong academic record.
‘Academic record? Ha!’ Nelson would say. ‘It’s about guts, Hunter. Guts and determination. I don’t care if you’re a lawyer or a banker, a teacher or even a clergyman. You have to set your sights high. Work out how you’re going to be someone. Greatness starts in the heart, Hunter, not in the head. Or maybe it starts in the gut!’ Nelson tapped his own taut abdomen. ‘There are greater men and lesser men – and that’s a biblical truth.’ (Nelson neglected to mention that the same biblical truth also promised that the first would be last.) ‘Which will you be, Hunter? It’s up to you, you know. Entirely up to you. Dare to dream, but don’t stop at dreaming, Hunter. Live the dream. You’ve got to want it. Dream plus desire equals success.’
When he discovered that young Hunter was a rising tennis champion with no interest in football or cricket, Nelson was delighted: ‘Never allow your success to depend on a team, Hunter. We must rise or fall by our own hand.’
Nelson had found in Mikey Hunter a sponge that soaked up his ideas about pathways to power, influence, wealth and perhaps even fame. The recurring theme was making it in a tough and competitive world and the need for a certain ruthlessness in the pursuit of personal ambition.
‘We don’t need to hurt anyone else in the process, Hunter,’ Nelson said on several occasions, ‘that wouldn’t be Christian. But we mustn’t let others stand in our way, either. Don’t knock them over – just work around them. There’s always a way. It’s like a bicycle race: thread your way through the field. Go wide, if necessary, like a jockey on a champion racehorse.’
Mikey’s engagement with the gospel according to Nelson grew ever stronger. Inspired by everything he was hearing, Mikey began to believe that he could carve out a future for himself that would eclipse even his father’s glittering success in the higher realms of orthodontistry and make both his parents proud. He would be someone.
John Nelson left the school after his allotted term, the elderly chaplain returned, and chapel services resumed as before. But the Nelson influence remained in the hearts of many boys, and none more than the heart of Mikey Hunter. It was a resource he drew on constantly, throughout the remaining awkward years of adolescence and the tough years of early adulthood, as he juggled a job and a part-time university degree, and dreamt of the stars.
The conviction that he was destined to be someone took deep root as Mikey began to put the Nelson Doctrine into practice. At work, he knew how to occupy the power seat in meetings; he knew how to make steady eye contact with the people that mattered; he knew how to extricate himself from pointless conversations; he even knew how to secure theatre tickets for himself or his clients – all thanks to Rev. John Nelson’s Life Skills group. His shoes were always
so immaculate and so highly polished that they attracted admiration from people – mostly older and more senior people – who saw them as an outward symbol of inner virtue. And when he began seriously courting Hermione, he even knew how to choose and wrap inexpensive gifts so they looked more expensive than they were.
His confidence and his determination to succeed naturally caught the eye of employers. Promotion came quickly and The Plan became increasingly clear in Mikey’s – later, Linc’s – mind. He knew he would rise above lesser men, because he knew how to do it.
In later years, Linc occasionally caught glimpses of John Nelson on TV – sometimes delivering a homily direct to camera as part of his own late-night program, sometimes in the background at some big political or cultural gathering, sometimes as part of a religious procession of some kind. Linc noted with satisfaction that Nelson was putting his own theories into practice, but he took no particular interest; he no longer needed to draw inspiration from Nelson. Linc was his own man, living his own dream, as Nelson had promised him he would be, way back when he was merely a boy called Mikey.
■
Looking back, Linc credited John Nelson with having had more influence on his world-view than his own father had, but the great disappointment, in the case of both men, had been their lack of any guidance on how to deal with Linc’s problem of shyness, disorientation and occasional panic-induced nausea in the presence of girls.
Linc’s mother, invariably described by his father as a ‘trained nurse’ – presumably to distinguish her from all those untrained nurses loose in the system – was reluctant to impart to her son whatever knowledge she might have acquired, personally or professionally, about sexual matters. She was clearly embarrassed when Linc, as a young teenager, had raised the topic in the context of some rather alarming developments taking place in his own body. She advised him to pay close attention to SexEd classes at school.
He emerged from all this with a rather technical view of sex, and something of a blind spot where the relevant emotions were concerned. He never imagined for a moment that sex would be sought as eagerly by women as by men. Sex, to the young Linc, was something predatory males did – or tried to do – to defensive (or, with any luck, defenceless) females.
A few awkward goodnight kisses and some rather inconclusive fumblings were as far as Linc had got when Hermione McClelland entered the picture, courtesy of a meeting arranged by one of Linc’s colleagues. ‘A lovely face,’ everyone said of Hermione, and Linc could see that was true. She was also rather more encouraging, and indeed forthcoming, than any other girls he had encountered. The fact that she was studying medicine immediately appealed to Linc’s parents, even before they met her.
Hermione McClelland’s upbringing had been almost as sheltered as Linc’s, though as an avid reader of novels and a keen movie-goer, she was well acquainted with the idea of emotional intimacy and the unleashing of passion. But her natural reticence and an overbearing mother ensured that her own passion was never completely unleashed until she had graduated, found a job and was safely married to Linc. Her parents, both doctors, would have preferred her to marry another doctor, but they were prepared to entertain the idea of Mikey Hunter as a person who was, by his own account, ‘going places’ and was determined to ‘be someone’. They had never encountered anyone quite as brazen as this young man, but, at the same time, they found him curiously irresistible. The entire world of advertising and marketing was a mystery to them – the mystery only deepened when Mikey changed his name to Lincoln ‘for professional reasons’ – but they assumed some people must make a legitimate living from such activities. Hermione could never quite grasp what Linc did, or why it was important, though she tried to feign interest when he asked her to watch TV commercials for brands he was working on.
Both technically virgins when they married, it took a little while for Linc and Hermione to achieve something approaching mutual sexual satisfaction. They both saw this as an accomplishment – another of life’s hurdles cleared – rather than a source of joy.
One thing they shared was a focus on outcomes and a suspicion of spontaneity. They undertook the business of conceiving their first child with characteristically careful planning and attention to detail. That child having been successfully gestated and delivered, a second conception was duly scheduled and another child produced. Hermione then had her tubes tied to avoid any possibility of accident. ‘I’ve seen the stats,’ she told Linc. ‘The pill is not one hundred percent foolproof, and the potential side effects are best avoided as one ages.’ Linc, always impressed by statistics, readily endorsed her decision.
They were both rather puzzled by parenthood, though the children did perform the useful function of taking the focus off their parents’ own lacklustre relationship. Linc’s career soon began to soar, and Hermione’s to falter. She realised she wasn’t particularly keen on medicine, had no desire to become a GP and no appetite for the battle – as much political as professional – to become a specialist. She found a part-time job as an assistant in the operating theatre of St Walburga’s, not far from home, and found that a very satisfactory arrangement. It pleased her parents to be able to tell their friends that she was still practising medicine. Surgery, no less.
Linc and Hermione’s emotional demands on each other were minimal. They ran an efficient household. Hermione spent a lot of time with the children and was socially active within a small circle of like-minded people who had children at the same school as her sons; Linc’s involvement in all this was marginal, at best.
Gradually, however, Hermione’s vague dissatisfaction with her life developed into something darker. She began to resent Linc’s devotion to his work, symbolised by his name change. (Indeed, she never stopped thinking of him as Mikey, and felt increasingly estranged from the man who had become Linc, especially when he took the further step of adding ‘The’ to his business card.) The boys seemed to need less and less of her as they grew up and the older one left school and went to university. She increased her hours at the hospital to keep herself occupied, and lived much of her life inside her own head, stimulated by reading and visits, generally alone, to the theatre and cinema. She started to nag Linc and the boys, and to hate herself for it.
Then she fell into a rather haphazard relationship with a visiting surgeon named Jerome Witherspoon who had, bizarrely, introduced her to some of the sexual techniques Linc himself was now attempting to deploy in the marital bed.
7
‘THIS ISN’T WORKING, Markus.’
‘The Hunter not forthcoming?’
‘Poor choice of words, but you’re right. Let’s just say he’s enjoying himself immensely, but conversation is definitely not on his agenda. My attempts in that direction have fallen rather flat.’
‘Well, I don’t think any of us would go to Linc for conversation, as such. He’s incapable of small talk, as we all know. Gets straight to the point, which is usually either a new business pitch, or an idea for an existing client, or a complaint about the incompetence of a colleague. He doesn’t socialise. He’s like a machine. Or a missile. But I did think that once you’d –’
‘Don’t finish that sentence, Markus! Even when I try to talk to him about business, he clams up. Totally. Almost as if he thinks I’m prying, which of course I am.’
‘Perhaps you need to be more subtle, Jo.’
‘On the contrary, I think I might need to be far less subtle. I told you Linc is an innocent. He is quite naïve in lots of ways – almost like a child – even though he’s such a powerhouse when it comes to selling.’
‘Especially himself.’
‘Quite.’
‘What do you mean by “innocent”, exactly?’
Joanne shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She had no intention of recounting any of her intimate moments with Linc – that wasn’t part of this deal – but she found his shyness and general reticence as he lay trouserless on her couch both shocking and endearing. In matters sexual, he appeared to have
the range and repertoire of a schoolboy.
‘A bit unsure of himself, almost. Completely unlike the way he presents himself around the office. He’s steeped in marketing theory and practice, from everything you and the others tell me. Sharp as a tack. Confident. Teeming with bright ideas. But, I don’t know . . . you’d never call him a man of the world. Where has he been all these years? What kind of wife does he have? What have they been doing?’
‘She’s a doctor. I’m sure he must have told you that. And he works. He works very hard. He loves it. He’s good at it. It’s who he is. I doubt if Linc ever really relaxes. I don’t know if he understands about time off. He never takes holidays. I mean, that’s part of what makes him such an asset, but it’s also what makes him kind of . . . I don’t know.’
‘You were going to say boring. And that’s it! He’s terribly, terribly boring when he’s not fired up and on the stage.’
‘I’ve heard people say that about actors.’ Markus adopted his chin-in-the-hands pose. ‘So what are you recommending, Jo?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing. I’d say he’s hooked alright – he seems to be enjoying himself immensely. He’s insatiable, not to put too fine a point on it. Persistent. So he’s not going anywhere. That part of the deal is sewn up. It’s just that I’ve drawn a blank as far as pillow talk is concerned.’
Joanne looked sternly at Markus, willing him not to say anything lascivious, but Markus just smiled his faint smile.
‘I hate to bring up Doug,’ he said.