The Boys' Club

by Wendy Squires

  'Come on,' Roxy squealed. 'Give us the juice, Trenty.'

  'Well, it was only one certain studly god you know I am the biggest fan of – Graham Hunt.'

  'Oh yes, what was it you told us you wanted to do with him again, Trent?' Ron Scott, the Ron in Fox and Ron, jumped in. 'Be his gay surfboard, I think you said.'

  'That's right, Ron, he could easily be the future Mrs Allenby if he plays his cards right. But unfortunately, it looks like that's not going to be the case any time soon, judging from his behaviour last night.'

  She wanted to put her head in her hands and collapse against the steering wheel. Then again, a more fitting time for a breakdown was only seconds away.

  'Loving it! I need more!' Roxy exclaimed.

  I can't stand that gibberer Foxy, Rosie thought. She puts the women's movement back about a hundred years.

  'Anyhoo, after all the nicey-niceys at dinner with the network, it appears that after being put in a cab Mr Hunt reappeared in Kings Cross so he could continue playing. And he certainly knows how to have a good time, if you know what I mean . . .'

  'The network won't like that!' Foxy giggled.

  'That's right. I think Mrs Hunt might not be too happy either, considering she wasn't at the dinner last night because she's expecting a baby any day now.'

  'Oooh-wah,' hooted Foxy. 'He's in trouble.'

  'He's in trouble,' Rosie said to herself, imitating Foxy's infuriating singsong voice.

  'Anyhoo,' Trent continued, 'your faithful correspondent caught up with him in the wee hours this morning at Club X and let's just say he seemed high on a little more than life. Ouch! Did I say that?'

  'Yes you did, you naughty boy,' Foxy chirped. 'We're going to have to slap your wrist for that one.'

  'Well, it's truuue! Honestly, I'd watch that man read the Yellow Pages, but it seems like he is a bit naaaughty! Don't you just love it? But it gets better. He wasn't alone. No siree. A very attractive blonde around town was by his side all night long, even in the little ladies' room, it seems.'

  'No!' This time it was Ron piping in.

  'Yes! I can tell you the head of publicity at Six will not be happy about this one. Hello out there, Rosie Lang, if you're listening.'

  Rosie felt ill. Not knowing what else to do, she opened the ashtray in the front dash and fished around for a decent-sized cigarette butt. As she tried to light its crusted black stub, the carousel noise cranked up yet again.

  'Rosie Lang,' Rosie answered, a distinct croak in her voice, too stressed to note who had dialled.

  'Rosie, it's Julia here, from Little Darlings Daycare. I think you'd better come back and get Leon. He was just sick and he's crying for his mum.'

  Nooooooo!

  'Thanks, Julia. Look, I'm just around the corner but I have to get to work. What am I going to do with him?'

  'Sorry, I can't help you with that, but we can't keep him here – it's against the rules. No sick kids allowed. If you'd waited this morning to sign in, as all parents are required to do, I could have told you that. Can his father pick him up?'

  'Huh!' Rosie scoffed. 'He'd be too busy for that, writing his next opus and all.'

  'Er, yes, well someone needs to collect him,' Julia continued, a tad curtly. 'And soon.'

  Instead of making an immediate U-turn, Rosie drove another block and stopped at a corner store where she bought a packet of Marlboro Lights and some Quick-Eze. Nervously she lit up, refusing to chastise herself for smoking again, and braced herself to ring her mother, Vera.

  * * *

  'Hi, Mum, it's Rosemarie.'

  'Well, well, my only daughter rings her mother out of the blue. Let me guess, you need something.'

  Rosie smiled to herself. Her mother never failed to pile it on at every opportunity.

  'Actually, Mum, I can't lie. I do need a favour. Daycare just rang and Leon is sick. He can't stay there and I have to get to work. Can I drop him with you? It'll only be for today, I promise. You'd be doing me the biggest favour and you always say you never get to spend enough time with him.'

  After a few seconds' silence and a hearty sigh on the other end of the line, Vera Lang spoke again. 'Well, Rose, I can hardly leave my sick grandson to fend for himself now, can I? And it seems that's what will happen otherwise as it's clear you have no intention of taking a day off from that job of yours to attend to your only child. You know, there was never a day I wasn't at home waiting for you to get off that school bus. I gave up any dreams I had of a career when I had you because, in my day, raising a family was the most important thing a woman could do. Not running around with TV types, which you seem to prefer.'

  Normally Rosie would have taken her mother's bait but knew she couldn't today. She was actually beholden to Vera, more's the pity.

  'Mum, I wouldn't say I prefer running around with TV types, as you suggest, but I do need to make a living and, I'm sure you will agree, hanging on to the only home Leon has ever known is rather important at this fragile time in his life.'

  'Well, you have a point there,' Vera responded. 'He has just lost his father so I think losing his home as well might be too much for the little man. Okay then, I'll cancel my plans, Rosemarie, and take my grandson, but I do have a life too, you know. I can't be here at your beck and call.'

  'Yes, Mum, I know, you're an absolute champion,' Rosie said, holding back what she really wanted to say. 'I'll be there in ten.'

  And with that, Rosie lit her second cigarette of the day and made another illegal U-turn.

  CHAPTER 4

  Rosie still found it hard to comprehend how she had ended up running the publicity department at the country's leading TV network. In part she blamed the delusional state she was in when she accepted the job: nappy brain combined with sheer terror at the thought of returning to the workforce after three years of lactating, arse-wiping and failed attempts at mothers' group assimilation. But if she was really honest, Rosie had simply been chuffed that Big Keith saw something special in her. The fact that she was a reporter – a vocation the Big Man notoriously referred to as the boil on the butt of humanity – made his out-of-the-blue offer all the more seductive. Rosie had to admit she had been well and truly charmed.

  She also had to admit she'd been terrified of returning to newspapers full time. Her confidence had taken a massive nosedive thanks to working as a freelance, the isolation and lack of feedback festering into full-blown paranoia. Not to mention her marriage to Jeff unravelling before her sleep-deprived eyes. So when Six's then head of publicity, Lara Green, called, saying Big Keith was a fan of her weekly personality profiles in the Sentinel and was wondering if she would be interested in doing a piece on him, Rosie thought she had landed the scoop of the decade – an interview with the media-shy grandfather of Australian TV. Her career could get back on track after all!

  What Rosie – and certainly Lara Green – didn't know was that she was not to interview Big Keith; he was actually interviewing her – for Lara's job. It was Rosie's first lesson in the ways of the TV jungle. In hindsight, she should have seen the Machiavellian move of making someone organise the usurping of their own job as a warning. However, the lure of playing with the big boys in the infamous bear pit that was Network Six had blinkered Rosie to some of the more unpleasant aspects of her seduction.

  The day of that first fateful lunch, more than a year ago now, she had been too nervous to drive, so she took a cab to the network, double-checking that her tape recorder was working and rereading her questions on the way, trying to ensure she didn't stumble or, worse, have a white-out. It had happened to her before with boring young soap stars when she was a cadet reporter, but somehow Rosie knew Big Keith was not the type of man you'd be likely to nod off around mid conversation.

  Big Keith Norman was both an oaf and a legend. Even those who hated him – and let's be honest, the man had enemies – begrudgingly admired him. Known as TV Rex in the industry, Keith was a dinosaur from the eighties still stomping around the Jurassic Park of free-to-air television
and refusing to evolve at the risk of his own extinction. He'd been instrumental in steering the network through an unprecedented twenty-four years without losing a single ratings survey.

  Until recently, Keith had been given free rein at the network, to the point where he grew to believe he actually owned the station rather than just ran it. But now that the proud owner of Australia's finest media asset was a subsidiary of the giant Korean investment company Tang.Inc, Keith's funds had been given a handbrake and his ego a make-under.

  With his failing health and all that digital and internet 'hoo-ha', as he called it, speculation was rife that Keith was thinking of hanging up his lap-lap and leaving the jungle before being booted out by a pen-pusher. Not that anyone believed this would happen easily.

  Please let this be an exclusive, Rosie had prayed to whoever it was up or out there watching over her as her cab arrived at the famous network gates and was directed to the reception area. Maybe I' ll be asked to write his biography, she fantasised. Wouldn't that stick it up Jeff?

  In the foyer, Rosie felt her adrenalin levels rise and kick her heartbeat up a gear as she surveyed the huge framed photographs of the network's talent. Some of the biggest names in Australian television's past and present looked down at her from those hallowed walls, including the legendary Crystelle Callaghan, who Rosie had been watching religiously ever since she was a toddler on her mother's knee and would soon count as a friend and ally.

  To the left was a photo of the Channel Six news team, with the bastion of Australian journalism, the recently deceased Willard Frost, in the foreground. Rosie pulled out her notebook and wrote down some 'colour' that, in a pinch, could provide a good lead-in to her profile: 'If ever there was evidence that Willard Frost is irreplaceable at Six, it can be found in the network's grand foyer, where a portrait of the news great still rules supreme.'

  Rosie almost missed it when the receptionist at the large desk told her to proceed to the executive lift, thinking that the young woman was still talking to callers sent through from the main switchboard behind her. In the few minutes she had been waiting, Rosie had heard her directing two callers to the Network Six website to find a recipe they had missed jotting down from a segment on that morning's G'day Australia program; telling others what time the tennis would air; and, most commonly, politely informing irate viewers that their complaints had been noted and would be forwarded to the relative department heads. What a horrible job, Rosie thought, unaware that worse jobs existed at the network.

  Waiting for the famous mirrored lift with its one stop – Executive Level 5 – Rosie recalled reading how it was built so the network's 'carpet strollers' could avoid sharing their rarefied air with any of the lowly workers from the other levels. As it announced its arrival on Level 5 with a ping, Rosie noticed the quiet hush, which belied the nervous energy bristling behind each of the frosted glass doors ajar along the dark oak halls before her. It was from one of these dark corridors that a diminutive Asian woman approached. I bet that's her, Rosie thought. It's got to be Mae.

  Like all powerful men, Keith had a super-efficient woman behind him in the form of his longtime PA, the notorious Mae – sometimes called Nurse Ratched at Six, in reference to the icy nurse of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest fame. She looked like someone who baked nice bickies to have with afternoon tea, but Rosie had heard that Mae had balls of steel under her layers of Laura Ashley.

  In fact, Rosie had some questions for Keith about Mae: Is it true your wife refers to Mae as your 'other woman'? Is there any truth in the legend that you make Mae take three phones to bed each night and check she complies by randomly dialling the numbers? These questions would have to be slipped in at the end, of course, after Rosie had what she really wanted – the first quotes from the Big Man himself on what it felt like to be looking down the barrel of his beloved network heading to the intolerable position of second place.

  'Mr Norman would like you to join him in the boardroom for lunch,' Mae said after Rosie had introduced herself.

  'Oh, I didn't know we'd be having lunch but that's fine, I guess,' Rosie answered, trying to hide her excitement.

  Mae led her towards the huge floor-to-ceiling oak doors that opened onto the boardroom of television mythology, a place where it was said you'd just as likely be hired, fired or laid as you'd be to eat. Rosie delved nervously into her bag, feeling again for her recorder.

  'There are no tape recorders allowed in the dining room, Ms Lang,' Mae instructed her calmly. 'I would be happy to hold it for you while you dine.'

  'Oh no, that's fine,' Rosie said. The first rule of journalism was never to let anyone take your notebook or recorder. 'I'll hang on to it if you don't mind.'

  'Fine then, Ms Lang,' Mae replied passively. 'If you insist.'

  'It's not recording. Look, no red light,' Rosie said as she held her bag open for inspection, holding on to the machine for dear life, realising she looked like a shoplifter pleading innocence.

  'Yes, I can see that, Ms Lang. You may enter now and enjoy your meal.'

  With this, Mae quietly made her way back to her desk, leaving Rosie to face the imposing oak doors which were all that separated her and Big Keith Norman. Psyching herself for what lay ahead, she took a few deep yoga breaths in lieu of the cigarette she so desperately wanted, then knocked on the door.

  'Come in,' a gruff voice bellowed from inside.

  Rosie checked herself – her best Scanlan & Theodore suit had never failed so she knew she looked okay, but, hang on, there was a bit of telltale cat fur lodged on her skirt. That bloody cat! If it's not piss, it's fluff ! I should never have allowed Leon to keep it, she admonished herself. What if Keith is allergic? What if this stray bit of cat fur led him to have some kind of seizure? Word is, the man is in poor health. Rosie licked her finger, ran it along the offending area, blew off the fluffy excess, took another deep breath, crossed herself for luck, then thrust open the doors.

  Big Keith looked smaller than Rosie had expected, but perhaps the huge, imposing bulk of the heavy eighteen-person dining table at which he sat was distorting the scale. Standing beside Keith was Lara Green, the network head of PR, who Rosie had spoken to once or twice in the past to organise quotes for stories she was writing for the Sentinel.

  Lara was one of those immaculately presented women who belonged in shampoo ads. Her hair was like glass with the glossiest shine and her size 8 designer suits were cut so finely they draped catwalk perfect from her runner-slim hips. Rosie discovered much later that Lara Green started each working day at Six in make-up with the G' day Australia hosts, having her maquillage professionally applied and her hair blow-dried poker straight. Rosie didn't know whether she liked Lara or not. There wasn't anything not to like, as she was always pleasant enough – it was just that Rosie had never trusted people who were always in control. In her view unflappability could only be attained at the expense of something really useful – like sincerity.

  'Rosie, great you could come,' Lara said, extending a slender, perfectly manicured hand.

  'Thanks for organising the interview,' Rosie replied, her voice suddenly sounding gratingly coarse compared to Lara Green's pitch-perfect timbre.

  'What fucking interview?' Keith barked, suddenly paying attention to the women. 'I'll be fucked if I'm going to have my lunch spoilt.'

  Rosie watched as Lara gave Keith a questioning look, to which he seemed indifferent. 'Lara, you can piss off now. I'll handle things from here,' he continued, dismissing the surprised executive with a wave of his enormous hand. Rosie couldn't believe it, but Lara Green actually appeared – for the briefest moment – flustered, before her seamless smile returned.

  'Fine. Enjoy. Bon appetit.' And with that, Lara glided elegantly – and reluctantly – from the room.

  Keith didn't stand up to offer Rosie a chair, something she was grateful for, as it always made her feel somehow humbled or on the back foot when men did that. Knowing the Big Man had a reputation for business first, Rosie decided to launch rig
ht in.