In total, the evidence of my passage filled two and three-quarter pop-up Ikea storage boxes. A Politics 201 essay on Checks and Balances in the Australian Constitution. A diatribe addressed to the editor of Rabelais, the student newspaper at La Trobe University. The notification letter of my acceptance as a graduate trainee in the Commonwealth public service.
The papers were stored in no particular order. Cataloguing them could wait, something to occupy my sunset years at the Old Apparatchiks Home. Only occasionally did I pause between mothballs to peruse a memory. A staff photo from the Labour Resource Centre, Wendy beside me, her belly big with the imminent Red. A well-received position paper I’d written in 1980 on the untapped potential of co-operative credit agencies. All the vanished dreams of social democracy were mouldering in my boxes, snacks for the weevils. Sic transit Jack Mundey.
Half-way through the second box I found what I was looking for. The cheap newsprint had faded to a parchment yellow and the creases were permanent, but the silverfish hadn’t yet done their worst. The eight issues of the Federated Union of Municipal Employees News that I had edited, probably the only copies still in existence. I knelt on the floor and carefully turned the pages.
Charlie’s photograph appeared at the top of his monthly reports as Victorian State Secretary. The same photo every time, a simple passport-sized head-shot. He was somewhere in his early forties at the time, slightly younger than I was now. His face had aged over the years, but it hadn’t really changed.
There was a magnifying glass among the oddments in my top drawer. I switched on the desk lamp and took a closer look. The eyes, crescents of old ink in a genial teddy-bear visage, contradicted nothing I thought I knew about the man.
Something about the story of that morning at Lake Nillahcootie was nagging at me. Something didn’t quite gel. I could accept the fact that Charlie had hauled Merv Cutlett’s limp form into his car and driven him, semicomatose, to the Shack. His judgment was clouded by his concern for Margot and he had obviously misread the seriousness of Merv’s injury. The disposal of the body, too, had its desperate logic.
But Charlie jumping into the water? It was an unnecessary embellishment. The man-overboard story didn’t need it. Not only that, it smacked of self-aggrandisement. Not Charlie’s style. Something else had happened out there in the boat, I was sure of it. A piece of the jigsaw was missing.
I leafed through the pages, scanning the other photographs. Most were of Merv Cutlett. Merv the Great Leader and Merv at Work, stern-faced defender of the working class behind his redoubt of logs-of-claim and keys-of-access. I found Charlie again, one of the figures in the background of Merv Shares a Laugh. Annual Picnic December 1977, read the caption.
The crowd basking in the great one’s presence included Sid Gilpin. He was wearing a wide-collared short-sleeved sports shirt, the top buttons open to better display the medallion around his neck. His left arm was draped around one of the skylarking crew. On his left wrist was a chunky metal band.
My heart skipped a beat. Could it be a watch, I wondered? A Seiko Sports Chronometer, as seen in the Polaroids that Detective Constable Robbie Stromboli had shown me at my electorate office? I put my nose to the lens and squinted at the blurry monochromatic image. Sid’s jewellery was a name bracelet. I couldn’t read the engraving, but I knew what it said. Wanker.
‘Grub’s up!’
Red banged a spoon on a saucepan lid. The dinner gong had sounded.
We tucked into our pasta with gusto, washing it down with orange cordial. Beer and wine were only for shelf-stacking nights. Not that Red’s day hadn’t been busy. Monday was his heaviest timetable and there’d been post-school toil over a hot assignment, due within the week. Unusually, Theatre Studies was giving him the pip.
‘Motherfucking Courage,’ he complained through a forkful of saucy tagliatelle. ‘Brecht.’
His school had a reputation for liberality, giving it a roomy niche among the progressive element in Melbourne’s middle class. To offset parental qualms about elitism, its curriculum offered Marxist agitprop along with interschool rowing and the international baccalaureate. But Red found Bertolt far too preachy, especially when he was expected to turn in a six-hundred-word essay on the cigar-chomping old Stalinist’s dramaturgical critique of bourgeois ethics.
‘Give me Lorca any day,’ he said, mopping his plate with a crust.
‘They didn’t have any,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to settle for Yoplait.’
‘Not Jean-Louis Yoplait, founder of the Comédie Française?’
‘Apricot Yoplait, his temptingly luscious mistress.’
After we’d eaten, Red returned to his homework. I took a half bottle of sav blanc into my den and hit the phone. First I called Margot and made reassuring noises. She sounded washed out, but she didn’t put up a fight.
Next I rang Mike Kyriakis. Both his home and mobile numbers were engaged. I had a few sips and tried again. And again.
He was working the phones too. So far, so good.
I put everything but the FUME News back in the archive boxes, added the last of the moths’ knackers and stowed them away again. Then I reclined on the couch, wine in hand, and contemplated the situation.
The proper, responsible course of action was obvious. Wait until the remains were officially identified. If the police continued to regard the death as a possible homicide, try to persuade Margot and the others to appraise them of the true circumstances.
It would be the best thing for all concerned. Given the passage of time, the police might well decide not to pursue the matter further. Even if they did, they’d probably have a hard time convincing the Director of Public Prosecutions they could make the charges stick. The physical evidence was questionable and sworn admissions were unlikely to be forthcoming. In the meantime, I should butt out and stop making promises I had no idea how to keep.
But I wasn’t going to do that, was I? Not while mad, bad Sid still had those fucking bankbooks.
The phone rang. It was Helen Wright.
‘We’ve just sent out a press release for Mike Kyriakis, alerting the media to his intention to run for Coolaroo,’ she said. ‘And you remember that kid there on Sunday, the young tyro sitting on the floor? Well, he spent the whole day tooling around the electorate with the membership lists. Seems there’s a lot more party members on the books than on the ground. Unless some of them are living six to a room, the Right has been padding the books. Heavily. We’re running up a hit list for the returning officer. If the central panel wasn’t stitched up so tight, we’d actually have a real chance.’
‘We?’ I said. ‘You sound like Mike’s campaign manager.’
‘It’s just a hobby,’ she said. ‘During the day, I work for Phil Sebastian.’
‘You’re a very wicked woman, Helen Wright,’ I said. ‘To think that until last week, you worked for the straightest man in Australian politics.’
‘Ah, Charlie was such a square,’ she said, a smile in her voice. ‘I haven’t had this much fun in years.’
When Red stuck his head around the door at bed time to say goodnight, I told him there was a chance I’d be late for dinner tomorrow.
‘I’m going out of town,’ I said. ‘When I get back there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’
That something was our respective putative careers.
For years I’d been telling myself that I was standing aloof from the petty squabbles. Truth was, I’d been sitting on the fence for so long I had a crease in my arse the size of the Mariana Trench.
Suddenly, and to my surprise, Thorsen’s offer of a shadow ministry had fanned the few slumbering embers of my ambition into life. But state Labor was a dead end. I’d be in a twilight home before we got back into power. Federal politics at least offered the prospect of a shot at office.
It was shit or get off the pot, I’d decided. And Canberra was the only place worth shitting.
I caught the eleven-thirty shuttle from Tullamarine, the first flight availabl
e at short notice, after a brief but comprehensive meeting with Ayisha at the electorate office on my way to the airport. The cab dropped me at the Senate-side entrance to the federal parliament building just before one o’clock.
Say what you like about Australian politicians, we make no effort to conceal our delusions of grandeur. And there is no better evidence of our robust self-image than the seat of national government.
Part-boomerang, part-bunker, all modern conveniences, it tunnels into the heart of the nation like a glorified rabbit burrow. A pharaonic tumulus crowned with a metallic flagstaff of such monumental banality as to make a rotary clothesline look like the Eiffel Tower.
Before I left home, I contacted Barry Quinlan’s office and was told he might be able to find a few minutes before Question Time. So after I’d been scanned for hidden weapons and issued with my visitor’s pass, I shook off my escort and headed to Ozzie’s for a snippet of lunch before our little chin-wag.
It was a typical, glorious early-May day in the Australian Capital Territory. The sky was Delft-ware blue, streaked with the white vapour trail of a high-flying jet and the maples in the parliamentary courtyards were a claret blaze amid the ornamental pools.
Ozzie’s, the in-house coffee shop, occupied a wide, glass-walled intersection at the apex of the bicameral boomerang. Its tables were deployed to catch the traffic, offering its customers an excellent view of the passing political wildlife. Politicians and media hacks converged there to graze on light refreshments and freshly made gossip.
As I stood in line for a salad roll, I cast an eye over the faces and configurations. Given the hour, there was considerable coming and going. I spied the federal Treasurer, a moon-faced ponce, quipping with a table of journalists, pretending to have a sense of humour. A notoriously eccentric National Party backbencher from Queensland was treating a couple of his ruminant constituents to a cup of tea and a scone.
And there, amid a group of men so badly dressed that they could only have been ABC journalists, was Kelly Cusack. She was wearing a delectably snug navy-blue skirt-suit and a cream silk blouse. As she saw me see her, she smiled to herself as if struck by a slightly amusing idea.
‘Uh-oh,’ I thought.
She walked straight towards me, then reached through the queue to tug a paper napkin from the dispenser on the counter, contriving to brush against me in the process.
‘Oh hello, Murray,’ she said, like she’d just noticed me. I heard the faint rustle of her blouse and there was a lilt in her voice that needed no clarification.
Taking her napkin, she departed along the window-lined corridor, twitching her tail behind her. I put my salad roll on the back burner, waited twenty seconds and nonchalantly followed. The corridor turned and I found her standing alone at the open door of an empty elevator.
‘You’re kidding?’ I said.
‘You game?’
This wasn’t on the schedule, but I was prepared to be flexible. I followed her into the lift and the doors whooshed shut.
‘I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes,’ I said.
‘So let’s skip the foreplay.’
There were three buttons. She pushed the one marked M.
Five seconds later, the doors slid open and we stepped out. We were facing a blank wall with a sign that read ‘This room is not intended for eating, drinking, smoking or any other purpose.’
‘Mezzanine?’ I said.
‘Meditation.’
The meditation room was a long and narrow curve with light grey carpet and a series of alcoves set behind low blond-wood screens. Slit windows, one per alcove, offered views of the encircling Brindabellas. A selection of devotional texts sat on a lacquer table. The Book of Mormon. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Steps to Christ. The space radiated a calming, vaguely Japanese feel. We had it to ourselves.
Kelly led me down a step into the furthermost of the alcoves. Unless there’d been some recent changes in church policy, it was not one of the steps to Christ. Behind the privacy screen was a cushioned bench. Kelly pushed me backwards onto it and unsnapped her suspenders.
Suspenders! My hesitation vanished. I heard the sound of one fly unzipping and my little bald monk emerged from his place of seclusion. Kelly turned her back and lowered herself onto my lap, assuming the position known to the sages as Reverse Cowgirl. I sought the four-fold path to nirvana.
‘God,’ I exhaled, my jewel within the lotus.
‘Om,’ came a nasal hum. ‘Om mane padme hum.’
‘Om,’ answered a second, different voice.
‘Shit!’ hissed Kelly, clenching her kundalini. ‘It’s the WA Greens!’
Through some unprecedented quirk in the electoral system, Western Australia, the most racist, development-worshipping state in the nation, had returned two Green Party senators at the previous national poll.
Derided by the major parties as fruit-bats in the political canopy, the Greens had risen to the occasion. In a country where politics is mostly the province of besuited men apparently cloned from the same suburban solicitor, the WA Greens were neither men nor besuited. Nor did they dwell within sight of any known constellation. They were a matching pair of bona-fide superannuated hippy Earth Mothers. In the straitlaced environs of the Senate, they were truly a breath of fresh incense.
‘Ting,’ said a brass finger bell.
‘Om mane padme hum,’ chanted the two voices.
We had failed to notice their presence when we arrived. And the image of two middle-aged tie-dyed tree-huggers communing with the tantric ineffable in the next alcove, so close I could smell their patchouli oil, instantly neutralised the effect of Kelly’s nylon-clad thighs.
Her yoni bore down, enclosing my lingam. But the bald bonze was already backing out of the temple, retreating to his lonely sanctuary, renouncing all desire. Kelly squirmed irritably.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I just don’t have it in me today.’
She gave a sharp, irritated click of her tongue, and dismounted. ‘You’re not the only one.’
We refastened our clips and zips, summoned the lift and stepped inside.
I was contrite. ‘It was just too freaky, man.’
Kelly pouted. ‘I’ve always wanted to do it in there.’
‘And I’m sure you will one day, my dear.’
She laughed. ‘I’m sure I will, too.’
We stepped out into the real world and walked back towards Ozzie’s together. We both knew, I suspected, that it was our moment of parting. But it couldn’t end without words.
‘I can’t do it anymore,’ I said. ‘I don’t have the nerve.’
What I wanted was a woman I could make love to, lie beside all night, wake up with, then do it all over again, then go out for breakfast for all the world to see. I missed kissing, too. Those were things Kelly could never give me. Not that it hadn’t been fun.
‘Our relationship…’ I started.
‘Relationship?’ she raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I thought I was fucking you against a tree in a public park, you thought we were having a relationship?’
‘Our serial shagathon, then…’
‘That’s more like it.’
A Liberal minister hurried past, bound for the Reps, nodding to Kelly as he passed. We paused at a Fred Williams, one of the many primo-quality artworks that hung along the corridors, and pretended to discuss it.
‘You’re a sexual Maserati, Kelly,’ I said. ‘Zero to a hundred in twenty seconds flat. It’s a brilliant ride but I just can’t take the pace. I keep expecting us to flip over and burst into flames. It’s a sad admission, I know, but I think I’d be more comfortable with a Subaru. Last Friday in the Legislative Council, I’ve been sweating about it ever since. And this bareback stuff, it makes me feel guilty.’
She patted my cheek and smiled kindly. ‘You want out, eh?’
I gave a wan nod and gazed contemplatively at Fred’s daubs.
‘You’re just an old softie, aren’t you?’ said Kelly. ‘No offence intended.’
>
‘None taken.’
‘Then out you get, sport. No root, no ride. You were only ever a pit-stop anyway.’
‘No hard feelings?’
‘No hard anything, unfortunately.’
‘Come on. That was just today.’
Already we were joking about it, veterans of many a hairy scrape. We continued along the corridor, our fork in the road just ahead. ‘Moving right along,’ I said. ‘Can I ask what you meant last Friday about Peter Thorsen getting up the numbers for a spill?’
Kelly twitched her coiffure dismissively. ‘Old news,’ she said. ‘That’s why I rarely talk politics with you, Murray. You’re always two steps behind the play. Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About an hour ago, Alan Metcalfe announced that he’s commissioned an independent review of internal party procedures in Victoria. He’s found a top legal eagle from Labor Lawyers to chair it and given him an open brief. Says he wants to encourage participation, end branch stacking, make the party more accountable to its members, all the usual piffle. A thorough, broad-ranging review, conducted without fear or favour. He’s given it until the end of the year to hand down its recommendations.’
I gave a low whistle of admiration. ‘During which time nobody can challenge him without looking like they’re trying to forestall a democratic overhaul of the party. Six months for the submissions and recommendations, add another six for discussion of implementation and he’s bought himself another year.’
‘If Peter Thorsen was planning on doing a Fletcher Christian, he’s left it too late. Captain Metcalfe still holds the helm.’
We were almost back at Ozzie’s. I was expected in Barry Quinlan’s office in five minutes.
‘By the way,’ said Kelly. ‘Since our relationship is now strictly professional, mind if I ask what brings you to Canberra?’
‘A meeting with Barry Quinlan,’ I said. No reason to conceal it. She’d know soon enough anyway. Somebody was sure to notice me and Quinlan together and this place leaked like a surplus Soviet submarine.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Kelly knowingly. ‘The Coolaroo connection. It overlaps your electorate, doesn’t it? Poor Senator Quinlan, he’s really got himself in deep shit buying into that exercise.’
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