Last Long Drop

by Mike Safe

  ‘I think I know the type. Anyway, if it happens I’ll send you a first edition copy of the book.’

  ‘Forget that – twenty per cent of the sign-on fee will do. Good luck with it.’

  ‘Sounds like I’ll need it.’

  ‘You will.’

  The Chart Room was one of those panelled wood places that suggested overpriced surf and turf cuisine, fat cigars and old guys in claret-stained ties drinking too much of the red stuff while grumbling about how the world had gone to hell since their time at the top. During normal operation, all of the above rang true, except these days the old codgers fired up their Cuban specials in an alcove that opened onto a balcony and fresh air. Bah and humbug – so this is what anti-smoking laws have brought us, they were left thinking.

  Tess had used the restaurant several times to host events for distinguished visiting authors. Its formal, even old-fashioned, ambiance was supposed to suggest a certain degree of old money and power, but just as importantly, once the speeches and glad-handing were done and the free booze and canapés were consumed by the assorted freeloaders, the majority of the crowd was more than willing to move on – the media in particular. After all, it wasn’t really their sort of place. These days they preferred loud and pulsing dance music, garish fruit cocktails and lots of exposed young flesh – none of which was to be found inside the Chart Room.

  The turnout for the evening’s meet and greet looked impressive as Harcourt made his way into the mahogany-lined inner sanctum of the restaurant’s main bar.

  The first person he recognised was Gordy Stone, who was making short work of a large gin and tonic. Gordy was talking to Rory Black, the newspaper’s books editor. Black was a woolly-haired guy now well into his fifties and probably, like Gordy, in line for the next round of job cuts. A decade earlier Harcourt had seen him break a telephone in half when slamming down the handpiece after a loud conversation with a recalcitrant publisher. Black had said, ‘It’s not my fault they make these things out of plastic crap these days. Someone get me another one.’

  Back then, such moments were part of life in a newspaper office. Now for such an offence you were likely to be sent the bill for the replacement phone and issued with an official warning by the human resources drones. Anyway, Harcourt had always liked Black, who for a books editor seemed to be devoid of any sort of literary pretention. He simply liked well-written words that took their reader somewhere, be they the latest translation of the dense ruminations of some obscure European intellectual in search of his soul or the shoot ’em up blood and splatter of a slick-paced private eye noir.

  ‘Johno,’ said Black, ‘good to see you. Your dear wife always puts on a good turn – decent stuff to drink, a few good-looking women to ogle and even an author who won’t send you to sleep.’ He took a long pull on what appeared to be a large whiskey and soda.

  Gordy agreed. He was grateful for Tess’s invitation. ‘The PR gravy train isn’t what it used to be, but this looks like a good one – they keep the drinks coming.’

  ‘Quite so, old mate,’ said Black. He fixed Harcourt with a bleak smile. ‘Anyway, Johno, I’d say you’re lucky to be out of it. We’re the walking dead.’ He sighed and took another hard pull on his drink. ‘It’s a young man’s game now – they want whiz bang online bullshit every ten minutes to feed ten-second attention spans.’

  ‘But you’re here doing Edmund Harrison, big-time serious writer with a story to tell,’ said Harcourt. ‘This sort of stuff still gets a decent run, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t do tomorrow’s page-three story with the big picture. That went to some young thing with a short skirt and perky personality.’ Black stared darkly into his now empty glass. ‘And she has a writing style to match, short and perky.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve got an in-depth piece for the book pages on the weekend, haven’t you? Tess told me she’d managed to arrange a one-on-one for you.’

  ‘Yes, bless her. I had my half an hour with Harrison today but he told me next to nothing, the smartarse – the book’s more or less under wraps until he spills the beans on it in Adelaide.’ Black waved at the barman for a refill.

  ‘Well, it’s about his time in the Middle East, the whole never-ending shit fight that’s going on there …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know that,’ Black interrupted, ‘but he told me next to nothing that was even vaguely juicy.’ He contemplated his new drink. ‘You know, I first interviewed Mr Harrison years ago when he was on his way up and his novels and journalism collections were making a mark. He was good back then – a writer, not a fucking celebrity. Now he’s just what the world needs, another writer celebrity, or is that celebrity writer? Anyway, he’ll still sell his million or two.’

  Gordy offered a sardonic laugh and he and Black returned to their drinks.

  Christ, thought Harcourt, they’ll be telling gallows jokes in a minute. He left them to it and headed into the crowd, almost immediately bumping into his daughter and Silas, she in a standout little red dress and swept back hair, he in a perfectly cut dark suit and matching club tie.

  ‘So did you do your interview with the great man yet?’ Harcourt asked Kirsten.

  ‘No, it’s tomorrow morning. I’m meeting him tonight in preparation for it.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen the book yet?’

  ‘Well, no. Has anyone? Mum said there aren’t any copies of it available as yet because this whole thing in Australia is happening before any publicity was supposed to. Apparently she’s got a set of proofs but nothing more and she won’t let me see them either.’

  She smiled up at her father – and it was a smile he knew well, the one where she wanted him to ask for something that she couldn’t get herself. ‘Hey, Dad, you couldn’t talk to her, could you? See if she’ll let me have a look, just a peek, at the proofs? Maybe I can get a good angle for the interview, something special?’

  ‘No, Kirsten, I couldn’t. You have that out with your mother and, knowing her, there’s no way she’s going to show you anything. She’s stuck her neck out just getting the guy down here – and if the juicy bits of the book start leaking out in the local media, well, at least before Harrison says whatever he’s going to say in Adelaide, she’s liable to have her head chopped off, professionally if not quite literally. Her New York bosses are having to put on smiley faces about this whole thing because Harrison has the clout to play his games, but I don’t think it’s in Mum’s best interest to add any more to their irritation.’

  For a moment, Harcourt thought she was going to stamp her black-stilettoed foot like the sulky child she could play with considerable flair. Instead, she smiled sweetly at him and said, ‘Well, I’ll just have to work on Ed then, won’t I?’

  He sighed. ‘I guess you will.’

  ‘Ed?’ Silas evidently wasn’t happy.

  ‘Sorry, John,’ he said, turning to Harcourt, ‘but I think you’ve been supplanted as your daughter’s father figure.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Silas,’ said Kirsten. ‘He’s a great writer and it’s a coup for my magazine to land him. I can have the interview up on the website by tomorrow afternoon. It’s the sort of thing we need to get beyond the fluffy girly stuff that you’re always complaining we run. Whatever you think, this is a good get for us.’

  ‘Sure, it’s a good get for you, thanks to your mother.’

  ‘Hey, Silas, easy does it, mate,’ Harcourt said. ‘That was uncalled for.’

  ‘God, you can be a total dick at times, Silas,’ Kirsten said, her voice a low quiver. She had a glass of white wine in her hand and for a moment Harcourt thought she was going to empty it over Silas’s perfectly white shirtfront, if not his face.

  ‘Both of you had better calm down a bit,’ said Harcourt, his eyes sweeping the room to see if anyone near them had picked up on the edge that had entered their conversation or, more likely, the body language that had them staring down one another like a couple of gunfighters in an old cowboy movie. ‘For god’s sake. This is a media c
rowd and you’ll find yourselves a Twitter sensation within the next five minutes if you’re not careful. The room is full of all sorts of hangers-on who get off on that cheap point-scoring stuff.’

  Silas said nothing, merely turning his back and walking off through the crowd while Kirsten watched him go. They stood there for a few seconds, father and daughter caught in an awkward silence.

  ‘So what brought that on?’ Harcourt asked. ‘What’s going on with you two?’

  Almost absently, Kirsten took a long sip from her wine glass and then looked at him. ‘Nothing I can’t handle, Dad. He likes to be in charge, and when that doesn’t happen he reacts.’

  ‘Sounds like someone else I know.’ Harcourt smiled at his daughter.

  ‘Okay, sure, guilty as charged, but you have to understand Silas is a complicated guy. Beneath his self-assured exterior there’s a lot of insecurity – and he’s under a lot of pressure at work. A couple of the portfolios he’s working on have gone weird and some of his Asian investments are losing money hand over fist – I don’t know the detail, he doesn’t talk about it, but there are lots of dramas there that are beyond his control.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Do I love him?’ She laughed. ‘Well, there’s a question.’

  Harcourt looked into his glass and shrugged. ‘I guess this isn’t the time or place to ask something like that.’

  She followed his gaze. ‘In a way, the answer to that is something like the glass being half empty or half full – some days it’s half empty, others it’s half full.’

  ‘What is it today?’

  ‘More like fully empty at the moment.’

  ‘Well, this is getting a bit too cryptic for me. Yes, mine’s simply empty, the glass, I mean.’

  They smiled and Kirsten said, ‘Anyway, I’d better go and find him, calm him down a bit if I can. Mum’s over there with her prize catch. You’d better say hello.’

  He looked across the crowd and saw Tess, her boss Billy Duane and Edmund Harrison with a couple of high profile radio types, a right-wing shock jock with a self-inflated opinion of his own opinions and a current affairs interviewer from the other side of the political divide with a similar belief in his own worth. The pair shook hands with Harrison before walking away in animated conversation. It was easy to be friendly and conversational, no matter what your politics, when the drinks were top shelf and free,

  Harcourt made his way across to Tess, who was dressed in a tight black sheath of a dress, her hair swept back from her face much like Kirsten’s. After saying hello to her and Billy, who was keen to front the bar for a refill, Tess introduced him to Harrison, who was shorter than Harcourt had expected, much like screen actors often are when you meet them face to face. Harrison was handsome in a ‘man with a few miles on the clock’ kind of way, still with a full head of pepper-and-salt dishevelled hair. He had a paunch, but not a serious one, no doubt from too many hours before a word processor when not propping up bars around the world. There was something dark and rich-looking in the chunky glass he held, suggesting serious alcohol, despite his various bouts in rehab.

  ‘Ha, my lovely hostess’s champion,’ Harrison said extending his hand.

  Harcourt wasn’t sure what he meant by that – or, indeed, if he was trying to be a bit too clever. ‘Well, I don’t know about being a champion, but I’m still in the race after a fair share of laps around the track,’ he replied.

  Harrison at least smiled as did Tess and then there was some small talk about jet lag as her man of the hour had only flown in to Sydney that morning, and how she already had him hard at it on the PR trail to help account for his first-class airfare. Realising that the two of them were more or less going to get along, Tess excused herself, saying she was going to search out a couple of other notables Harrison should meet.

  Harrison chortled, apparently to himself, and said, ‘Tess, could you please make sure this lot are young and good-looking – oh, and female.’

  As Harrison pulled thirstily at his drink, Harcourt immediately thought of Kirsten.

  ‘Nice girl, your wife,’ he said. ‘Smart as can be and the sort I needed to pull off my little stunt down here. I presume she’s told you all about that?’

  ‘Well, as much as she can, I suppose.’

  ‘The truth is the know-alls in New York insist on trying to run my life, this part of it at least,’ Harrison said, gesturing to the roomful of people, ‘and that takes in everything from the editing to the promoting. But after this one, my contract runs out – and I may be running out as well, out of their hallowed hallways, that is.’ He smiled almost slyly, ‘I thought I’d give ’em a bit of hell on the way out.’

  ‘I suppose it’s nice to have that power, that option,’ said Harcourt.

  ‘Oh, certainly, but the reality is I’ve grown somewhat tired of what it’s all become.’ He looked into his glass, the last dregs of the dark whatever it was glowing in the bottom. ‘I still like the writing, well, most of the time, even though it becomes harder, not easier, with the passing years.’ He paused as if for emphasis. ‘But I’ve become a commodity now, a money-maker for the company’s shareholders. On the cover of this book my name’s bigger than the title. My photograph on the back was taken by some excitable American chap who usually does fashion shoots and film star portraits for Vogue and the like. For Christ’s sake, they even provide a hair and make-up person these days. I mean, this book is about a bunch of working-class kids with so few options in their lives that they have to go to these hell holes on the other side of the world, to places and people they don’t understand, where in a futile attempt to bring democracy they get shot to pieces. It’s impossible, and in the process many of them become all but dehumanised by what they have to do and what they end up seeing.’

  Harrison smiled almost ruefully, ‘So here I am about to travel the world, well fed and watered and being feted along the way, to tell their story while they, wherever they might be tonight, try to pick up the pieces and get their lives back together, those being the ones who’ve made it home in one piece, of course.’

  ‘I guess that sounds like a liberal’s perspective which is what you’re labelled, isn’t it?’ asked Harcourt. ‘Tess said something about the publishing brains in New York thought you’d gone too strong on the side of the military and that brought about the wrangling over the editing.’

  ‘I’m the first to admit that this book is something of a contradiction of virtually everything I’ve written before,’ Harrison replied. ‘I came to believe in these young men. I mean, they were poor and working class with only the most basic of educations – often hillbillies and trailer-park white trash, blacks from big city ghettos and south-of-the-border gang member types who’d never had a chance and the military was their last option. Many were racist, sexist and homophobic, everything else progressive society says it detests. Some were barely able to put a sentence together that didn’t include a string of expletives, but there was something righteous about them. I also found a great sympathy for those who commanded them – not the desk jockeys back in the Pentagon – but those on the ground, the platoon commanders and the like. I know others have written about this and sympathised with these men, but for me it became a necessity, hit me right between the eyes – you’ve got to see it, experience it.’

  Harrison stopped a passing server with a large silver platter of canapés and helped himself to one. Harcourt did likewise and added, ‘I understand. I think a part of it, as a reporter, as an observer, comes with getting older. It’s almost like you’ve come to see too much – but with all that experience when something manages to grip you, it really grips you.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you’re right there, the long perspective,’ said Harrison. ‘Your wife told me you were a career newspaper man and I’d say we two are about the same age, maybe I’m a year or two beyond you, but we’re more on the down side of the hill now than racing to get to the top. I’ve come to realise there are as many scoundrels on the left as there a
re on the right, although I still think the left offers a better class of scoundrel. Those on the right are too often just greedy bastards with a born to rule mentally, that’s certainly so where I come from. It’s all about them and theirs – what’s in it for me? And on the left … well, you probably know the type, the silver-tongued devil who in the end will come to a compromise, usually not a very good one, if it all gets too hard. He’s the slick operator who proclaims the nobility of the working-class struggle while being driven about in a limousine.’ He paused and pushed the remains of the canapé – it looked like a prawn on a cracker with a swirl of something creamy on top – into his mouth.

  Sounds like you’re talking about yourself there, mate, Harcourt thought. Then, however, Harrison surprised him.

  ‘But I confess that it’s now reached the stage where I include myself in the limousine-travelling brigade.’ He sighed and continued, ‘The simple truth is that this book, even with all my righteous intent, has been a trial, a long trial, and I’m tired. There are just so many arguments one can have, causes to be debated. I’ve seen more than my share of places that have gone to the dogs and the conniving bastards who sent them there.’

  A look of resignation crossed Harrison’s jet-lagged face and he looked wryly at Harcourt. ‘I’ve no idea why I’m saying all this to you, somebody I’ve just met. Maybe because I like your wife, her get up and go. Or maybe I’ve just had too many of these,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Oh, I still like the spotlight – it beats being thrown on the scrapheap – and I like the attention, well, some of it anyway and after you’ve done this stuff, performed long enough, you can talk your way into and out of almost anything. I even like the people, well, again, some of them, the younger, prettier ones certainly.’ Harrison hacked out a dry, hollow sort of laugh and his dark eyes seemed to lose their intensity for an instant.