by Mike Safe
‘Hmmm, very droll, Burk, you do have a way with words – well, the sort of words sports reporters and their subjects prefer using,’ replied Markinson. ‘You should remember that we live in an ever-changing world. Who knows what will happen to whomever this afternoon, let alone next week or next year?’
Burk ignored him and picked up his beer. But as Markinson moved away, he turned towards Harcourt. ‘Oh, all that aside, Johno, it’s quite opportune that I’ve bumped into you like this. I can tell you that your lovely daughter, the emerging media star that she is, will most likely be featuring on our front page tomorrow and across our internet sites, of course. Well, as much of her as we can show in a family publication. Someone who just happened to be holidaying on some island took some very nice shots of her minus her bikini top. It’s amazing the quality of photographs you can get on a mobile phone these days – we hardly need photographers on staff anymore. She’s there canoodling with that playboy writer fellow, Edmund Harrison. They’re on this lovely beach and he’s got his shirt off and is looking rather pasty white and wrinkly. She’s in much better shape than him – that’s obvious, of course. He’s old enough to be her father, grandfather maybe? Who could have guessed! That should get the chattering classes going.’
Harcourt moved towards Markinson, his hand balled in a fist, but Burk deftly moved between them. The hulking ex-rugby league forward loomed over the far too pleased with himself deputy managing editor, invading his personal space. Any trace of a smirk disappeared from Markinson’s face as fear took its place. He stumbled back, almost falling. Burk took another step forward and was back in his face again.
‘Now listen,’ he hissed, ‘the whole world knows you’re a rolled gold turd. I mean, that’s why you have the job you have – you have no ability as a journalist, as a writer nor real editor, and are only good for firing people.’
Burk paused for a second, letting his words sink in. Harcourt was impressed – he could see why his friend had been such an imposing presence on the football field. Burk continued, ‘I should let Johno plant one on you just for the hell of it, but me being the old footballer brawler that I am I could probably do a better job of it than him. Now get the fuck away from us before I get really angry.’
Markinson backed away into the crowded bar without another word.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Burk to those who’d noticed. ‘I haven’t belted anyone in a bar for thirty years – and that was only because some drunk accused me of taking a dive to win a penalty in a final.’
Those around laughed and returned to their drinking as the tension dissipated. Out of the corner of his eye, Harcourt noticed Markinson slip through the bar door and head into the adjoining restaurant.
‘I think I would have actually hit the arsehole,’ he said to Burk as they returned to their drinks.
‘Yeah, but you’re a surfer and you lot tend to be lovers, not fighters.’ Burk took a taste of his beer and looked hard at Harcourt. ‘Now, tell me – what the hell has that daughter of yours been up to?’
When Harcourt finished telling him, Burk shook his head. ‘Bloody hell, what a mess.’
‘Do you really think they’d put it on the front page?’
Burk shrugged. ‘There’s not much real news of any great interest around at the moment, Kirsten’s an attractive young woman with a high media profile while the Pommy writer is a notorious womaniser, sometimes drunkard and headline-grabber in his own right. Sensation beats serious any day of the week and what remains of the newspaper industry is just as happy as internet click-bait sites to cash in on it – and this would appear to fit the bill perfectly. In fact, Kirsten and the Pom are probably a step up from the usual soapy and reality TV nobodies. They actually have substance and he’s an international name. I know none of that’s of any comfort to you and Tess, but I’m afraid the gibbering classes will get off on it.’ Burk smiled ruefully and added, ‘This is what we’ve come to. So, yes, I think they won’t be able to stop themselves putting your daughter, minus top, on the front page.’
After leaving the pub and getting back to his car, Harcourt called Tess at her office.
‘Oh, shit,’ she exclaimed after he filled her in. Tess didn’t swear much, but if inclined to she didn’t hold back. ‘Oh, fuck. What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know what we can do. Have you heard from her yet?’
‘No, still nothing. I left another text this morning.’ She sighed. ‘I’ve been hard at it all day. There’re still emails and phone calls going in all directions in the aftermath of Harrison’s appearance in Adelaide. It got a lot of play in New York and London. Luckily, it was pretty much all positive, although there was speculation about him bucking management in New York and if he was going to stay with the company, that sort of thing. His agent in London is loving it, figuring how much he can talk up his price if he re-signs, no doubt.’ She went silent for a moment. ‘Meanwhile, I don’t know what Billy’s been up to – I can’t believe he hasn’t been on to New York about Kirsten and Harrison, although there’s been no hint of that in any of the stuff I’ve seen going back and forth so far.’
‘Well, maybe Billy won’t have to tell tales behind anyone’s back now – it seems they’ll know all about it soon enough.’
‘The whole world will know,’ said Tess. ‘What a mess.’
‘That’s exactly what Burk said at the pub.’
‘Well, at least he’s on our side, isn’t he?’
‘Of course, he is.’ Harcourt watched out the car window as a couple of pigeons squabbled over a scrap of hamburger bun that had been dropped on the dirty pavement. ‘But I couldn’t help the feeling that he was intrigued by the thought of seeing the pictures, not that he’d ever admit as much, of course.’
‘Christ, you men are all the same.’
‘What, me? I want to see my daughter’s breasts on the front page of the bloody newspaper?’
‘No, not you.’ Tess sighed yet again. ‘Not even Burk.’
They decided that after driving home Harcourt would call Kirsten again – he couldn’t remember how many times he’d already tried and failed to get through – and as last resort leave her a message about the photos.
‘That should at least get her attention,’ he said to Tess before ringing off.
And so on arriving home he made the call. Again, no answer and so he sent her a blunt text about her breasts about to be exposed on the front page of the biggest selling newspaper in Sydney and no doubt in other papers across the country while also being flashed up on morning talk TV. Two minutes later his phone rang. It was Kirsten.
‘Yes, Dad, I know about the photos,’ were her first words to him. ‘The guy who took them was drunk in the resort’s restaurant last night and just had to come up and tell us all about it. Apparently he’d just finalised the deal with that rag of a paper where you used to work … Well, where I worked too for that matter.’ She didn’t seem overly perturbed. ‘I was going to slap his face, but just as well I didn’t, I suppose.’
‘No, that would hardly have helped.’
‘Look, I know you and Mum aren’t impressed with Ed and me and this whole kerfuffle. I understand that and I’m truly sorry … about the photographs at least. We had no idea they’d been taken. God, we’d only been down at the beach for half an hour or so and that creep must have been lurking behind a palm tree or something.’ She drew a long breath, ‘I should have gotten back to you before now, but the incident in the restaurant and the photos threw us a bit. Well, me at least. Ed seems to think it’s all just a bad joke, an inconvenience, but he’s been down the paparazzi trail before.’ The line went quiet for a moment and then she added, ‘Please, don’t go all moralistic on me, on us.’
‘That’s not the issue,’ Harcourt replied. ‘It’s a matter of getting you through what’s going to be in your face wherever you look.’ Sensing that was a pretty futile comment, he thought of Kirsten’s boyfriend. ‘What about Silas? Does he know about any of this?’
&nb
sp; The other end of the line went quiet again. ‘Eh, no. Before we came up here I left him a message saying I was staying down in Adelaide for a couple of days on some arts stuff for my magazine.’
‘Kirsten, for god’s sake. Well, he’s going to know all about it first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Look, Dad, I’ll square it away with him, I promise.’
‘Kirsten, we can’t believe this has happened.’
‘Well, it has and it’s my doing and I’ll handle it. I can, I know I can.’ She explained that Harrison had been talking to his management in London and would have to leave for New York to ‘smooth things over with his grandpa publisher’ within a day or two. ‘He’s had his bit of fun with them. Now we’ll have to see how this paparazzi thing plays out, but I’m guessing we’ll be back in Sydney sooner rather than later.’
Very matter of fact, thought Harcourt. He told her to ring Tess who, after all, was Harrison’s publisher in Australia.
‘Yes, yes, I will – as soon as I finish talking to you. And Dad, please don’t worry. Isn’t any publicity supposed to be good publicity? For Ed and maybe for me as well?’
Jesus H Christ. She seemed just a little too pleased with herself. Maybe she was actually looking forward to the whole media frenzy that was about to be unleashed. He thought about saying something along those lines, but decided that neither of them needed the aggravation that seemed certain to follow such a comment.
After Kirsten rang off, he checked his phone and found a long text from Jack. Almost guiltily, he realised he hadn’t even mentioned to Kirsten what was happening to her brother and his fellow band members in London.
Jack’s text said he would be home in a couple of days. The other two Solar Sons had opted to stay in England for the time being and would spend a week or two in France and Italy while Sissy Broughton and the record company sorted out the status of the band and its future, if there was to be one. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t care too much about that for the moment,’ Jack had written. ‘Just be happy to get home, go for a surf.’ He’d text with the flight details when he had them.
Like father like son, thought Harcourt. When the shit hits the fan they’d both rather go surfing. He thought about it but knowing there was only a dismally small swell being blown about by cold onshore winds he decided against it. After all, he’d just returned from a couple of okay surfs with Vargas up at sunny Noosa.
Instead, he sat at his desk, fired up his computer and tried to come up with an idea for his next What Men Want magazine column. Following the publication of his first effort, the one about new music being old music rehashed, he’d had a couple of brief phone conversations with the editor, Darrell Farnsworth, who’d been pleased with the reaction it had sparked on the magazine’s website, most of it negative and even abusive from twenty somethings who’d suggested that the ‘old fogey’ needed to get out more. ‘Just what we needed,’ Farnsworth had said. ‘It’s all about getting a reaction.’
Harcourt didn’t care one way or another. His thousand dollar fee had been paid promptly into his bank account and the hard reality had sunk in that it was his only income at the moment. His various bank accounts had plenty in them and there was no urgency, but he wasn’t old enough to access his superannuation. All this money stuff had to be sorted out … sometime, somewhere, somehow, but not today. He sighed. What the hell was he going to write a quick thousand words about that would upset young males?
His indifference was broken as his phone rang. It was Burk. ‘Got the number for you. Phil Woodrell lives down the coast at Starlight Bay. Apparently, he’s pretty well dropped off the radar in the last few years. Got that from one of his old teammates, one of the few he keeps in touch with. Said Flipper, he still calls him that, is getting on and is in a pretty low way. His marriage hit the rocks years back, the booze knocked him around some more. You might have to sweet talk him to get him to open up.’ Burk laughed and added, ‘But then you were always pretty good at that.’
‘Yeah, but maybe I’m losing my touch.’ Harcourt took down the number and told Burk about his conversation with Kirsten. ‘I think she ended up sweet talking me.’
‘Maybe so.’ Burk paused for a moment. ‘As a friend I should also tell you that the photographs of Kirsten and the Pom were passed around at the editorial conference this afternoon and they’ll be on page one tomorrow for sure unless World War Three breaks out within the next couple of hours.’ He went quiet for a moment. ‘Uh, I don’t know how to put this – she’s showing a fair share of herself.’
‘Oh, bugger me. That’s just what I didn’t want to hear.’
Under the page one banner headline, ‘Love Story’ and accompanying photograph, the first paragraph read, ‘It’s a novel romance – TV talk show darling and outspoken women’s magazine editor Kirsten Harcourt has been caught frolicking topless on a romantic Barrier Reef beach with mega-selling international author and notorious playboy, Edmund Harrison, a man old enough to be her father.’
The almost full page colour photograph showed a laughing Kirsten wearing a black bikini bottom and nothing else as she struck a showgirl style pose in front of the pale and puny looking Harrison who wore oversized swimming shorts and an appreciative smile. Kirsten’s full frontal breasts had ridiculous red and yellow stars strategically placed across the nipples, no doubt to appease the newspaper’s more genteel readers – after all, this was supposed to be a family publication.
The breathless story, pieced together by the paper’s gossip writers, went on to tell how the pair had ‘hooked up secretly’ at the just concluded Adelaide Festival, which had also been attended by Kirsten’s mother, Tess McCormack, ‘the local publishing dynamo who is handling Harrison’s controversial Australian visit and is said to be shocked at the unlikely coupling that blossomed right under her nose.’
The photographs and story continued on pages four and five where Kirsten was seen emerging from the water like some sort of James Bond temptress, hands running through wet sweptback hair, her breasts prominent again and marked by the nipple-hiding stars. But the clincher was a larger shot of her and Harrison locked in a tight embrace, she bending back, he leaning into her, azure water and golden sands in the background.
Harcourt, who had woken early to check the story and images on the newspaper’s website, had expected the worst and so it had proved to be. His years on the newspaper frontline had taught him that this was going to be more an exercise in images than words – and he now felt a mix of anger and dread, especially with the embracing photograph. He stared at it with a feeling of helpless loathing before going on to read the rest of the story. It ticked off all the usual clichés – anonymous sources on the island described the couple as ‘loved up’ and even ‘steamy’. It resorted quickly to background, including more about Tess and the controversy over Harrison coming to Australia to spruik his ‘blockbuster’ new book. There were also several paragraphs about his turbulent past with a list of his various lovers and misdemeanours as well as literary accomplishments. In Kirsten’s case, and especially troubling to Harcourt, was a mention of her spurned boyfriend, Silas, described as ‘a hotshot money market dealer’ and how he and Kirsten, until now at least, had been part of ‘the cool young set about Sydney before this bombshell outing of what must be the literary world’s most surprising coming together.’
Harcourt flicked through a number of other websites, including the main click-bait peddlers and gossip mongers that specialised in cutting and pasting anything from anywhere and running it under their own names. That was already well underway and social media was firing up, including considerable reaction from Britain and the United States. Comments were the usual anonymous inanities, Kirsten being described as ‘hot’ and ‘a complete babe’ and Harrison as ‘grandpa’ and ‘a dirty old bugger.’ Others were more forthright with suggestions such as ‘I’d do her for sure’ while someone wondered ‘can the old guy still get it up?’
‘Oh, god,’ mumbled Harcourt to no one but himsel
f, ‘it’s a runaway beast.’
He sighed, rubbed his sleep-addled eyes, and went out to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He was greeted by Tess, tousle-haired and yawning, as she emerged from the bedroom. She looked at him, ‘Is it bad?’
‘Well, it’s not good. Take a look. It’s there for all the world to see.’
‘Oh, no!’ she groaned as he made the coffee. ‘I can’t believe that’s my daughter.’ She went silent as he waited for the coffee to brew. ‘I hate that man with my very guts.’ He handed her a cup. Her dark eyes flashed as in her characteristic way she swept the hair from her face. Harcourt waited in silence while she scrolled through a number of other sites.
‘So what do we do now?’ she asked, logging off. ‘What the hell can we do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What do you mean, nothing?’
He shrugged and looked at her. ‘Let’s face it. While simply doing your job today all sorts of busybody types are going to be asking about it and the best thing is to tell them nothing – as politely as possible. It’s like the old saying – never complain, never explain.’
‘Didn’t Benjamin Disraeli say that? Or was it Henry Ford?’
Harcourt shrugged. ‘I thought it was Kate Moss, but maybe she’s just the latest to use it.’
‘Well, she’d know,’ said Tess. ‘She’s had her media moments she could have done without.’
After Tess left for work, having fielded several phone calls already and told those on the other end next to nothing but in the nicest way, he again tried to think about a column for What Men Want. And yet again, he was hit by another bout of apathy as his mind wandered back to Kirsten and Harrison. Shit, he hated that smarmy prick.
His phone rang. It was Silas, the jilted boyfriend. Harcourt had no idea how he’d got what was his restricted mobile number as they’d never had any sort of phone contact before.