Campaign Ruby

by Jessica Rudd

  ‘How much more air do you need? We’re on the bloody roof!’

  ‘A lot,’ I said. I ran inside and into the Ladies. Sitting on the loo lid in the corner cubicle, I came to terms with what I had done. How could I have been so stupid as to not ask the fundamental questions before throwing my weight behind something like this? There was so much more I needed to know. Where did the party stand on the environment? And what about higher education? Affordable housing? Genetically modified food? It felt like I’d married a stranger in Vegas.

  Pull yourself together, Ruby, said my head. This doesn’t change anything. But it had. Everything was different. That lovely man who’d taken time out of his day to speak to my five-year-old niece was the same man who would deny my aunts the opportunity to love a child of their own. It was baffling.

  I called Daphne to confess.

  ‘Ruby, darling, it’s so wonderful to hear from you. What should we wear tomorrow night? Is it likely to be formal?’

  ‘I can’t do it anymore, Daphne. I’m truly sorry. I didn’t realise…I didn’t realise I was working for a bunch of bigots.’ A simmering tear plopped onto my lap.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You mightn’t have seen the news, but today I learned the party’s position on gay adoption,’ I sniffed. ‘I can’t keep working now that I know.’

  ‘Ruby, that is the sweetest and most stupid thing I’ve ever heard,’ she laughed. ‘What difference can you possibly make by heckling from the outside?’

  ‘But, by staying here, aren’t I endorsing their position?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘In fact, you’d be doing us all a favour if you kept going. Stay there. Be a challenging voice. So long as you know that your team would do a better job than the other team, I think that’s something worth fighting for. Don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Now, let’s get onto some important questions. What should I wear tomorrow night?’

  I laughed. ‘You look beautiful in purple, which happens to be the party’s colour.’

  ‘I have a plummy beaded wrap dress. Would that work?’

  ‘Sounds lovely.’

  ‘Now get back to work—we want to have something to celebrate tomorrow night.’

  ‘You’ll be the best mum one day, Aunt Daphne.’

  A square of loo roll absorbed the dampness on my cheeks and I went to rejoin Maddy. Beryl and her husband had flown up from Canberra. Senator Flight, her husband, various offspring and bursting belly hovered around the chips and dip.

  Theo was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. ‘We’re going to win this, Roo,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my lucky shirt on.’

  As the sun went down, the roof heaved with colleagues, most of whom I knew by email only. The LOO, Shelly and Abigail arrived with Luke. Max took to the centre of the roof with beer in hand. He seemed reinvigorated and opened his mouth to address his supporters.

  ‘Shoosh, darling,’ said Shelly, moving to stand in front of him. ‘It’s my turn. Thank you for all your hard work. If we don’t win tomorrow, it won’t be for want of trying. People think this is Max’s journey alone. It’s not. It belongs as much to you and your families as it does to Max and his. Abigail and I, with the combined technical prowess of Maddy and Roo, wanted you all to see our journey. And, if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask my husband to dance, because this was the song we danced to on our wedding day. I’d encourage you all to do the same. Kill the lights.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Max, ‘what she said.’ He kissed his wife and accepted her invitation, collapsing into her arms. Against the soft light of our projected journey, they danced like newlyweds to Elton and his ivories.

  Di took Luke; Maddy, Abigail; and Hawaiian Theo, me. The rest followed. Too tired to bust a move, we swayed in each other’s arms, occasionally joining in for the chorus. ‘Wanna swap?’ asked Di at the bridge. ‘You’re welcome to Luke.’

  A dejected Luke extended his hand. I kicked off my Up Yours, Oscars and went with it.

  His bad suit smelled like the promise of rain. His fingers played my lower back like a piano. He hummed the tune, his chin on my head, the sound reverberating between his jaw and my crown.

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What’s our position on genetically modified foods?’

  ‘Shut up, beautiful.’ He held me closer, so I did.

  Desperate and voteless

  I didn’t wake up because I didn’t sleep. Two things kept me awake. First, Elton John. Second, the fact that I was thinking about Elton John and not about the election. It was an insane-making cycle. The tune would play (mostly without the right lyrics) then my head would scratch the vinyl.

  Why in God’s name are you awake? Tomorrow is the biggest day of your career and you’re lying here with a forty-year-old ballad on loop in your frontal lobe…

  And then we’d go back to the piano interlude and so on until 4 a.m. when the newspapers thudded onto the carpet outside my hotel room door.

  I pulled the curtains along their runner to reveal the overcast Melbourne morning. The rich brown river was perfectly still and the streets were dotted with zigzagging party-goers making their way home. I grabbed the papers and dialled in.

  MAYBE MASTERS, said the Herald. CLIFFHANGER, said the Weekender. The poll was disgustingly close. We were even with the government. If I could have opened the windows at the hotel, I’d have called out to the revellers and reminded them to vote. I was still alone on the conference call. Just me and Mozart. They were seventeen minutes late. Eighteen. I hung up and texted Di.

  Where are you guys? R

  No reply. I tried Maddy.

  Are you joining this morning’s hook-up? R

  My phone buzzed.

  Dude, no hook up—it’s D Day. I’m making sandwiches for the booths in Pratt. Where are you handing out? M

  Don’t we have work to do? Where’s Max? R

  Sandwiches don’t make themselves. Max is hitting the radios from home. He’ll be voting at nine. M

  There must be something I can do. R

  Find a booth and work. See you tonight. M

  The lack of structure did my head in. Hang on, it said, I thought we were going to do the phone hook-up and race around trying to convince people to vote for us like usual. And now you’re telling me we have nothing to do?

  Which booth? All of my favourite candidates were in other cities. Melissa was in Launceston, Felix in Adelaide, Felicia in Cloncurry. I didn’t know anyone in Melbourne. Not a soul.

  We need wine, said my head.

  Good thinking. I showered, packed, checked out and hailed a taxi.

  ‘I need to go to the Yarra Valley,’ I said, jumping into the back seat.

  ‘I’m clocking off in half an hour, love. Sorry.’

  ‘I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars cash to take me there.’

  He thought about it. ‘Righto.’

  We drove past countless polling booths—churches, schools, community halls—each replete with bunting and other paraphernalia from both sides. Rolls of flimsy plastic bearing Max’s smiling face were being unfurled by volunteers along fences. Full body shots of the Prime Minister glistened on A-frame stands in the dewy dawn. Our campaign workers wore purple T-shirts and caps with MAX FOR PM in white block letters. Theirs were in black and white.

  ‘You look familiar,’ the driver said as we went through Lilydale.

  I looked at the rear-view mirror to examine his face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. I must have driven you before.’

  ‘I’ve only been in Australia for just over a month and in Melbourne intermittently.’

  ‘I never forget a face. What do you do?’

  ‘I work for Max Masters.’

  ‘I don’t bloody believe this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You took your duds off in my cab on the way to Tullamarine, remember?’

  It can’t be.

  ‘No, I think you’re mistaken.’


  ‘Nope, I told you. I never forget a face.’

  Or other body parts, for that matter.

  He winked. ‘You’ve got my vote, love.’

  ‘You can drop me here.’ I got out at a tiny weatherboard primary school in Warburton and paid him through the window. ‘The polls open in two hours,’ I said.

  ‘Good luck, mate!’ He sped off with a smile on his face.

  Mums and dads were setting up trestle tables. Support the WSS LAMINGTON DRIVE , read a handwritten sign. A man in a deck chair dozed under a purple cap, his thermos holding down a pile of newspapers. I cleared my throat. ‘Excuse me.’

  He stirred, adjusting his hat to see me. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I said. ‘My name is Ruby Stanhope and I work in Max Masters’ office.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said. ‘Why would Max Masters send a flunky to an unwinnable seat? What are you, media?’

  ‘No, I’m a financial policy advisor, except I’ve never done any financial policy advice; I seem to play a more miscellaneous role, but that’s not the point. I’m here because I want to be. My aunts live locally. And no seat is unwinnable.’

  ‘Do you have a card or something?’

  I showed him my parliamentary security pass. He rubbed his forehead in disbelief. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘We don’t usually get much interest in this electorate, especially not at’—he looked at his watch—‘a quarter past six in the morning.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do today and I needed to do something, so I got in a cab and came here. I hope that’s okay.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ve been manning this booth solo for twenty years, so it’ll be nice to have a bit of company. I’m Graeme, by the way.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Roo.’

  Graeme and I stood there all day. We ate lamingtons, drank tea and talked politics under the shade of a purple and white umbrella.

  ‘Max Masters for PM,’ we would say, handing our how-to-vote cards to passers-by.

  ‘Give Gabrielle a go,’ said Phoebe, our competitor.

  When the midday sun was burning my shoulders, Daphne, Debs, Fran, Clem, Pansy and the pups brought us homemade rye rolls with smoked salmon and watercress. Graeme said all his Christmases had come at once. Clem had tied purple ribbon to the pups’ collars, which wooed about seven voters by my count.

  ‘Well,’ said Graeme at five, ‘I guess we had better vote and pack up—why don’t you go first.’

  Trembling with excitement, I approached the school hall. In London, election days had always seemed so inconvenient— I’d rarely found time between conference calls to cast my vote—but this was different. I couldn’t wait.

  Inside, under the ceiling fans, eight cardboard cubicles stood proud with Australian Electoral Commission pencils attached. There were two ballot boxes in the middle of the room near a long trestle table, at which sat three plump ladies. Each had a name tag and a cheery smile. ‘Hi, love,’ said one, ‘what’s your surname?’

  ‘Stanhope.’

  ‘Do you live in this electorate?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t know which electorate I’m in.’

  ‘Well, where do you live? You can absentee vote from any booth in the country if you give me photo ID with proof of address.’

  ‘London.’ I realised the privilege wasn’t mine. It was devastating. ‘I’m not Australian.’

  The lady exchanged puzzled glances with her colleagues. ‘In that case, you don’t have to vote.’

  ‘But I really, really want to,’ I said. ‘I’ve been working on the campaign for weeks.’

  ‘Sorry, love, this isn’t an application process. You have to be a citizen on the electoral roll.’

  ‘What if I wait until five to six? Maybe there will be people who don’t show up and I could use their vote.’

  ‘That’s what we call a rort.’ Her tone hardened.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Graeme when I rejoined him.

  ‘I can’t vote,’ I said. ‘I forgot I’m not Australian.’

  ‘Oh, Roo, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay, just try to make your vote count for me too.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, you can have half of it, presuming we vote the same way.’

  A lady walked up the footpath towards the booth. She was barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt, wearing aviator sunglasses, car keys in hand. When she neared us, I said, ‘Max Masters for PM’ with a smile, handing her our pamphlet. ‘Give Gabrielle a go,’ pleaded Phoebe, whose handful of how-to-vote cards was diminishing faster than mine.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said the lady, a finger poised. ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.’ She landed on me, taking my card. ‘They’re all the same—vote for a politician and you’ll get a politician.’

  I had a hankering to slap her right across her vote-squandering face, so it was serendipitous that Daphne arrived to pick me up.

  I thanked Graeme (who had come over in an enviable post-vote glow) and invited him to the after-party in the city. He got a bit emotional, but it was the least I could do for a stranger who had given me half of his precious democratic right.

  We had done everything we could. Now for the result.

  This is it

  ‘How did Aunty Wooby get butterflies in her stomach?’

  ‘It means she’s nervous about something.’

  ‘Why is she nervous?’

  ‘Because tonight she’ll find out if all of her hard work has paid off. Tonight, you might be one of the first people to meet the new prime minister of Australia.’

  ‘Will there be face painting?’

  The car was still moving when I jumped out, leaving Graeme and my family to find a park.

  Max’s venue of choice for the evening was his local RSL Club. ‘That’s where we spend every election night,’ he’d said, ‘so this one won’t be any different.’ The media team loved it and the advancers loathed it, as is usually the case with bad ideas.

  It was a quarter to seven and the place was already overflowing. People were standing in the car park watching huge television screens broadcasting live from the tally room in Sydney. I pushed past the crowd to the front door and called Beryl, who came to collect me.

  ‘Roo, you look hot. Where did you get those shoes?’ She handed me a pass.

  I twirled and curtsied. ‘A man by the name of Louboutin made them for me. I know it’s a bit hot for boots, but they have been good to me before, so I couldn’t resist them.’

  Debs and Fran had gone shopping to buy me an election-night gift to go with them: a Collette Dinnigan black silk sheath dress, tied at the middle with a loose bow. My hair was behaving as well as it could, my burnt shoulders had settled into a healthy-ish looking tan and red lips and shimmery cheeks distracted from the thirty grams or so of industrial-strength concealer encircling my eyes.

  ‘Please tell me you have two of those shirts,’ I said to Hawaiian Theo when I saw him.

  ‘A man would have to be exceptionally lucky to have two lucky shirts,’ he said, uncharacteristically kissing me on the cheek. ‘You are exquisite tonight, Ruby Stanhope.’

  ‘Has he been drinking?’ I asked Beryl as she led me towards the RSL sub-branch president’s office.

  ‘Since last night. I hope we don’t win this—transition to government might be awkward with an inebriated policy wonk.’

  Luke was wearing his inaugural banana tree tie. His worst and my favourite. He and Di sat in opposite corners on the floor of the president’s office—a man with two basset hounds, Verbena and Vanilla, and a moggy called Chuck, according to the homemade matchstick photo frames on his desk.

  Maddy stood at a whiteboard, marker in hand. She had drawn up a table listing every seat in the country by state and territory in alphabetical order.

  ‘I haven’t had a shower,’ said Di. ‘Don’t come near me.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Luke.

  ‘Does anybody have a spare whiteboard pen?’ asked Maddy. ‘This one’s los
t its pluck.’

  I handed her the one from my Toolkit.

  Luke scratched his head. ‘The exit polls from WA are in, but they can’t be right.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘Because they average out to us getting about fifty-four per cent, two-party-preferred.’

  This probably wasn’t the time to ask what an exit poll was. It sounded like a horrendous workplace injury.

  ‘They’re always wrong,’ said Maddy. ‘Just discard it.’

  ‘Hang on a tick,’ said Di. ‘Those results are consistent with the swing we’re seeing in South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. Write it down somewhere.’

  I looked at the president’s circa-1991 television, which sat atop a crocheted doily. ‘Looks like Eleven has changed its commentary team.’ Oscar wasn’t on it.

  ‘Yep, they ditched Pretty Boy for Ng,’ said Di. ‘Apparently he’s been sent to cover Donaldson, the seat Missy Hatton is running for in Tasmania.’

  ‘A friend of mine who writes for the Herald told me Pretty Boy is going to be moving back to Melbourne to cover state politics after this,’ said Maddy. ‘Bureau chief or some similar trumped-up title.’

  My head, heart and body rejoiced in chorus, but this wasn’t the occasion for a victory dance.

  ‘Mirabelle just texted me some of the preliminary results for Forster in Darwin,’ said Luke. ‘It’s a four per cent swing to us. That would mean Fred Smythe now has one of the safest seats in the country, even after all that immigration stuff.’

  ‘Four?’ I asked. Luke looked up at me and nodded.

  Maddy wrote the number on the board.

  A private number called my phone. ‘Roo, it’s Felicia Lunardi calling from Cloncurry. I wondered whether you could do me a favour.’

  ‘Anything, Felicia. How’s it all going up there?’

  ‘Mick O’Donoghue has told me that exit polls for Rafter are indicating a clear victory, but I can’t get through to anyone at party HQ. Can you look into it for me?’