Campaign Ruby

by Jessica Rudd

  ‘Garnish,’ I said as we passed the first floor.

  Max laughed. ‘Mind if I ask why?’

  ‘Long story.’

  Luke shook his head.

  Ping, went the lift. I scurried to the Ladies to scrape the sprouts into the loo; that’s where I learned that vinaigrette stings when it makes direct contact with your eyes.

  ‘Roo, are you in here?’ It was Maddy. ‘I just bumped into Shelly. She said you were covered in’—I emerged from the cubicle—‘salad.’

  ‘Garnish.’

  ‘Archie just resigned,’ she said, sniffing my cheek. ‘His own decision. Press conference at the hotel in an hour.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘Can you call Melissa Hatton and tell her to sit tight until Max has spoken?’

  ‘Sure.’

  During my second shower for the day, I thought about what I should say to Luke. It was inappropriate to apologise. I used my finger to draft a text message on the fogged-up shower glass.

  Luke, sleeping with Oscar was stupid. I regret it. I just thought you should kno…

  No, that was even more stupid than sleeping with Oscar. I turned off the tap, stepped out of the shower, and continued on the mirror.

  Please don’t think I’m something I’m not.

  The fog subsided and I was faced with my own flushed reflection. I erased my handwriting with a towel, dressed and ran to set up the press conference.

  An hour later, the media were rolling in. The cameras, the snappers, the journalists. Serious ones came first and used the time to study the media release, jotting down notes here and there. Then came Oscar, strutting like a peacock.

  What on earth did we find attractive about that man?

  A lady I barely recognised sat in the front row. She did not read the release. She had her eyes closed, like she was meditating. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked Di.

  ‘That, my dear, is Anastasia Ng. She’s only the greatest journo on our planet. Pretty Boy’s boss. She’s been on leave because her husband had surgery.’ Di sighed. ‘If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing now, I’d want to be her. She’s incredible. Incisive. Balanced. Lethal when she disapproves. Genius.’

  That’s the ‘batty’ one Oscar is going to replace?

  ‘Is she the one who’s on her way out?’

  ‘Ng? I don’t bloody think so. Sharp as a tack, that chick. There’s no way anyone else could even begin to fill her shoes.’

  Max strode in. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said when he took to the lectern. ‘I wanted to say a few quick words about my former staff member Archibald Andersen. Mr Andersen has offered me his resignation following a unilateral decision on his part to try to dig into the Prime Minister’s personal life. I have accepted his resignation.

  ‘I want it to be known that I have enormous respect for the Prime Minister. She is a competent politician and should be judged as such. I have no interest whatsoever in her personal life. It is none of my business or anybody else’s.

  ‘That is why Mr Andersen was right to offer me his resignation. Gutter politics have no place in my office or any public office. In fact, as you all know, I denounce it. My party and I are capable of tackling the government on policy and policy alone, and that’s what we intend to do.

  ‘I apologise to the Prime Minister and seek the forgiveness of the Australian people and hope we can put this behind us.

  ‘Of course, I will take any questions you might have.’

  I watched Anastasia Ng.

  ‘Mr Masters,’ said Gary Spinnaker, ‘how do you expect to maintain your advertising campaign against the government’s dirty tactics in the light of this scandal?’

  Max answered. Anastasia was the only journalist in the room looking and listening rather than scribbling in her notepad. She was like a photojournalist, absorbing every word as though it was an image.

  She took the last question. ‘Did you ask for Mr Andersen’s resignation or did he offer it? And if he hadn’t offered it, do you think you would now be calling him a former staff member?’

  Not exactly a batty question.

  Max stumbled. ‘I’m not going to speculate on a hypothetical. What’s done is done.’ He thanked everyone for their time and left with a smile plastered on his dial. Ouch. ‘See what I mean?’ whispered Di. ‘Slice.’ She followed Max out.

  Oscar was too busy staring into the Mirror app on his iPhone to witness Anastasia’s incision, let alone understand it.

  Surely you’re not going to stand by and watch Pretty Boy screw over another smart woman, are you?

  No. I’m not.

  Hallway of shame

  I rolled over: 2.53 a.m. Blast. I begged my bladder to hold out for another hour. I tried to get back to sleep, but when my smooth leg encountered a hairy one I wondered whether it might belong to someone else. No such luck: just a fatigued shaving omission from the night before. Grumpily, I staggered out of bed and felt my way around the dark hotel room. My bare hip hit a sharp corner. ‘Ouch.’ I rubbed the newest bruise of my collection.

  Mercifully, I had remembered to leave the bathroom light on, a trick of the trade to help steer weary campaigners through uncharted hotel rooms.

  I edged towards the lit strip of carpet before me, closed my eyes and opened the door. It sprang shut behind me. ‘What sort of daft designer carpets a hotel bathroom?’ I wondered aloud. I blinked the coloured stars away, waiting for my pupils to adjust.

  This was either the longest bathroom known to man or I was standing in the seventeenth-floor hallway. I tried the door to my room behind me. No joy. In vain, felt my side pockets for the key. No key. No pockets. No bottoms, in fact. Just frayed cotton knickers, a buttock-scraping Financial Services Authority T-shirt and one shaven leg. Crap.

  Using both hands to stretch my T-shirt down to micro-mini level, I waddled to the lift and prayed for an empty lobby. Ping pong, sang the lift. Its doors opened and I stumbled in. My nose hit the G button. I pictured the security guard spraying his coffee at the screen as he watched my misfortune unfold. Mirrored walls gave an unflattering multifaceted view of my sleeping ensemble. Two knotted tufts of hair stood at an acute angle to my scalp. A rivulet of drying dribble had escaped my mouth. Still holding down the FSA, I made use of my shoulder to wipe it off. Mission impossible.

  Ping pong. My shaven leg held the lift open. A vacuum cleaner growled around the corner, followed by a uniformed young woman.

  ‘Hello,’ I yelled above the hullaballoo.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said, turning off the machine.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ I said. ‘Would you mind asking them to cut a new key for room 1707?’

  ‘Hullo?’ she asked, looking very concerned.

  I raised my voice. ‘Hello again. I’ve locked myself out of my hotel room. Would you—’

  ‘No speck in goulash. Surry.’ She looked very nervous.

  It’s remarkably difficult to use body language hands-free. With thumb and forefinger I tried to indicate pushing the keycard into a slot and removing it.

  ‘No key. Key. I need key.’

  ‘Surry, no, funk you.’ She shook her head and wheeled her vacuum away.

  ‘Funk you too,’ I said. Crappest of craps.

  ‘Hello? If someone is there, please come to the lift.’

  Why preface it with ‘if someone is there’? If someone is there, they’ll hear you. If no one is there, they won’t.

  Shut up, head.

  I thought we were going to the loo.

  Shut up, bladder.

  ‘Hello?’ said a voice, probably male, but I hoped female with laryngitis.

  ‘I’m in the lift.’

  Footsteps approached. Salvation nigh, I gripped the hem, yanking it as low as it would go without warping my unconstrained boobs.

  ‘Roo?’

  Crappest crap of craps. ‘Luke?’

  My elbow reached for a button bearing two inward-facing arrows. Success, albeit accompanied by Luke’s laughter. I pressed 17. INSERT CARD HERE , read a sign b
eneath an empty slot. Crappest crap of crappest craps.

  Ping pong. The doors opened, revealing the lobby once more. There was a mixture of pity and amusement in Luke’s smile.

  I did my best to tuck myself into the corner so that he could see only my head around the doors.

  ‘Um, your reflection…’ ‘Avert your eyes.’

  He obeyed. ‘Here, put this on.’ He handed me his suit jacket. I closed the lift and put on the jacket.

  My head laughed. Don’t you think it’s ironic that you’ve been saved from a dire wardrobe malfunction by something that should be on the set of Miami Vice?

  Instinctively, I pushed up the sleeves.

  Ping pong.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’ He blushed, bringing colour to his ashen, unshaven face.

  ‘I locked myself out of my hotel room,’ I said, putting my smoothest leg forwards. Then I shuffled out of the lift to escape the hall of mirrors. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘I’ll get another one cut for you.’

  He left, giving me enough time to hide my bottom half behind a well-placed umbrella stand.

  ‘Shouldn’t be long,’ he said when he returned. ‘I feel overdressed.’ He undid his collar and slid off a pink gingham tie.

  ‘Why are you in the lobby at 3 a.m.?’

  ‘I just got back from the LOO’s place. We’ve redrafted the launch speech.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘You look shattered, Luke.’

  ‘No offence, Roo, but you’re not really in a position to be commenting on appearances…not that you’re… because you’re…’

  ‘Listen,’ I chanced, ‘I understand that Di told you about me and Oscar Franklin.’

  ‘Roo, I don’t need to know.’ His smile evaporated. ‘It’s none of my business. You don’t need to explain.’

  ‘I know, but I’d like to. It was the kind of mistake you make once. I choked on—’

  He held up his hand to mute me.

  But it was an important sentence to finish, so I said, ‘Eye candy—I choked on eye candy and it didn’t even taste good.’

  That sounded much better in here, said my head.

  There was a terrible silence. If my hand hadn’t been helping gravity with his jacket flap, it would have slapped my forehead.

  He slid down the wall he was leaning against and sat on the floor in front of me, holding his head in his hands. This was a good thing, because if he had been looking up, my bristly shin would have been in full view. I swapped legs again just in case.

  ‘I missed my kid’s parent–teacher interview tonight,’ he said finally. ‘Again.’

  ‘Your kid?’

  The finger painting. Sun, house, cat, man, child. Woman?

  ‘Yep. Daniel. He’s nine. I missed it.’

  ‘I didn’t know you have children.’

  ‘Child. Just the one.’

  ‘Well, Daniel probably appreciated it as a gesture of trust. I used to dread parent–teacher night.’

  His smile returned. ‘You’re right: Dan’s fine. Bella, on the other hand—’

  ‘Your wife?’ I breathed in.

  He rubbed his bare finger. ‘My ex.’

  I breathed out. ‘How do you cope doing your job and being a parent? I don’t even have a goldfish and find it difficult enough to balance things.’

  ‘That’s the point—I don’t cope. I suck at multi-tasking. I can’t keep going like this.’ He sighed. ‘Win or lose the election, this is it for me.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said. ‘If we win, you’d walk away? Just like that?’

  ‘No, not just like that. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a bloody tough call, but it shouldn’t be a tougher call for me to walk away from my job than it is to walk away from my son.’

  ‘Sir,’ said the man on the front desk, ‘Miss Stanhope’s room key is ready.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ He dragged himself to his feet.

  In the lift, Luke said, ‘I shouldn’t have said all of that. I don’t want to stress Max out before the election so I haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘My lips are sealed.’

  Ping pong.

  ‘Thanks for the jacket.’ I handed it back to him.

  ‘You’re welcome. See you in an hour.’ He walked towards his hotel room. ‘And Roo?’

  ‘Mm?’ I said, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Thanks for listening.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  I inserted the new key. The green light flashed approvingly. I turned on the lights, ran for the loo and added ‘buy pyjama pants’ to my To Do list.

  The Launch

  ‘Why are we launching the campaign twenty-five days in?’ I whispered to Maddy backstage.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Shhh.’

  ‘Definitionally,’ I said, ‘a launch marks the commencement of something. A rocket can’t go into orbit until somebody says “We have lift off.” This campaign has already lifted off.’

  ‘What about ships?’

  ‘What about ships?’

  She leaned in closer. ‘Are you telling me that every time a boat named after one of her ancestors is built, Her Majesty steps into her overalls, picks up a bottle of Yellowglen from the Windsor bottle-o and pops up to a Liverpudlian dry dock to scream “bon voyage” over the PA system?’

  ‘Yellow what from the Windsor what?’

  ‘Shoosh,’ she said. Max stood beside us. The pages of his speech were tightly rolled into a tube. He stared at the floor, his fingers fidgety with adrenaline.

  An elderly man approached the stage. Abigail got out of her seat to help him up the stairs. He wore a grey suit with a purple MASTERS FOR PM badge on his lapel. The audience clapped. When he reached the lectern, he said, ‘Hello, everybody, my name is Frank and I’m pleased to introduce a boy who loves his country.’

  The crowd went quiet.

  ‘When he was eight, he had to write an assignment for school about careers. The other kids wrote that they wanted to be ballerinas or firemen. This particular kid said he wanted to serve his country. He got a C on the assignment because apparently that wasn’t a career, but, boy, did he prove them wrong.

  ‘At age seventeen, he borrowed my late wife’s Datsun and drove to Melbourne to join the navy. There, he served for decades, both here and abroad, before an injury made it difficult to continue.

  ‘But his assignment was still clear. Now he seeks the highest office of service for his country, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.’

  Max looked up, his fingers still.

  Frank’s voice broke a little, but he re-established composure. ‘He’s a man of conviction, courage and integrity. He’s my son, Max Masters, the Leader of the Opposition and next prime minister of Australia.’

  The crowed erupted into spine-tingling applause, the kind you could feel. Max moved across the stage and into his dad’s arms. The flashing cameras were blinding, but I could just make out the tear stains on Milly’s emerald silk tunic as her dad introduced her baby brother.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Max, when we had all calmed down.

  I studied the audience as Max spoke. People laughed, nodded, clapped, cheered and, at the end, stood up. Hardened hacks were stirred to their feet. When our hands tingled from being smashed together, Shelly, Milly, Abigail and her grandpa joined Max on stage, so we clapped until our palms throbbed.

  Afterwards, Max sat calmly in a chair with a salad sandwich and cup of tea. ‘How do you think it went?’

  Luke, who like Max and Theo was operating on no sleep, could scarcely contain himself. ‘It couldn’t have been better.’

  Shelly squeezed her husband’s knee. ‘It was the best speech you’ve ever given.’

  Max smiled. ‘Thanks, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m glad we did the redraft last night,’ said Theo. ‘There was a standing ovation when you talked about gutter politics. It could have been a disaster after the shit sandwich Archie served us.’

  Maddy nudg
ed him, gesturing to Abigail.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘After the poo sandwich…’

  Abigail giggled.

  ‘Roo, can I borrow you for a minute?’ said Di, barging into the room.

  ‘Sure.’ I excused myself and closed the door behind me. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘What do you know about social networking sites? How permanent are things once they’re on there?’

  ‘As permanent as black shoe polish on white carpet. Why?’

  ‘Gary Spinnaker is running the only negative angle he can find on the launch. Abigail said something online this morning. Apparently her friend posted something like, “How come you’re not at sports day Abs?” She replied, “Dad’s making some boring speech and Mum said I have to go.”’

  ‘That seems harmless enough.’

  ‘Wrong,’ said Di. ‘All the happy, clapping pictures of Abigail next to Shelly today will look fake in tomorrow’s papers. And the wowsers out there will say she should have been in school.’

  ‘Firstly, she’s just turned thirteen, so of course she acts cool with her friends. I would have eleven nose piercings and an eating disorder if I was thirteen and my father was Opposition leader.’ I shuddered at a flashback of my father making a speech at my school careers fair entitled ‘The Merits of Banking’, which became known as ‘The Merits of Wanking’. ‘Secondly, every parent can relate to pulling their children out of school for an aunt’s wedding, a sibling’s graduation, a holiday.’

  ‘Roo! We need to fix this. The LOO can’t do much without belittling Abigail, which he would never do. Abigail can’t exactly retract because it’ll look forced. The PM hasn’t had her campaign launch yet. She might decide to leave her kids in school to make a point, then this becomes an issue about parenting…Hi, Shelly.’

  Di and I stared at our shoes.

  ‘What becomes an issue about parenting?’ Shelly moved closer.

  ‘Would you mind if I talked to Max about it first?’ pleaded Di.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would.’

  ‘Can we perhaps talk to you both at once?’

  ‘If you must. Max, can you come out here for a minute, darling?’

  He was utterly exhausted. It seemed unfair to give him this news.