The Speechwriter
Page 9
‘There’s a weird echo.’
‘Is there?’ Fuck. I’d failed already. ‘I’m in a toilet,’ I confessed.
‘A toilet?’
‘A cubicle. At work. It’s rancid, but the fact of my being in a toilet is less important than my telling you I’m in a toilet, because—’
‘I’m glad you called.’
‘Okay.’
‘We need to talk.’
‘We are talking.’
‘Sorry, you’re in the toilet?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’m not sure I want you there while we talk right now.’
‘We’ve been talking a lot about my location.’
‘Toby.’
‘Yes?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘That’s why I called.’
‘Can you, I don’t know, go someplace else?’
This didn’t sound good. I wasn’t moving. I couldn’t move. My heart rate was quickening, my limbs tensing.
‘Toby?’
‘I’m moving,’ I lied, while renewing my interest in the bowl’s profane patterns and remaining quiet for the time that it might take to move to the imaginary room.
‘Toby?’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t do this anymore.’
A labyrinth without a centre
On the office’s giant plasma screen, which was always playing Sky News, an ex-premier was welcoming a neo-Nazi on his show — not as an extremist, but as a peer and policy analyst. Through tears, I watched the interview on captions.
‘Welcome to Fortress,’ the host said. ‘Your weekly respite from political correctness. Returning to the desk is conservative activist Ricky Hammer, who made such a big splash on last week’s show. Welcome back, Ricky.’
‘G’day.’
‘And remember, you can join the conversation via our Facebook page, or on Twitter with #Fortress. So, mate: we made some headlines last week. Why do you think that was?’*
[* Spoiler alert: it’s because he’s a fucking Nazi.]
‘Well, Pete, we both know there’s a limit to what can be said in this country. If you express a view outside the elite’s preferred ideology, you’ll be punished. And that’s what happened. Hung, drawn, and bloody quartered.’
‘Some have criticised me for not raising certain questions with you.’
‘I heard.’
‘Then let me put some to you now, just so they can’t say that I haven’t.’
‘I’m not afraid of scrutiny, Pete.’
‘Apparently, you’ve said that Hitler was heroic, and Mein Kampf should be taught in schools.’
‘Well, that’s what the elite media would have you believe.’
‘Okay. It’s also been said that you were a member of the white supremacy group Combat 18, named for Hitler and dedicated to sparking a race war.’
‘Slander.’
‘I’m sorry about these questions, Ricky, but let’s just get them out of the way, in the name of transparency, before tackling the real issues, like water polo and our eroding national pride.’
‘Knock yourself out.’
‘There’s a suggestion that you’ve spent time in prison for stalking women.’
‘False.’
‘And armed robbery.’
‘Laughable.’
‘And arson.’
‘Please.’
‘And drug possession.’
‘Well, if pride in blood and honour is a drug, then sure. Guilty.’
‘I think that clears everything up. For those at home, let us know what you think of ethnic cleansing by using the hashtag #SkyDebate.’
I was sobbing now. Archibald heard me, and looked away from a performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. His eyes were also red, but it was hard to know if this was from emotion or the miasma of dead prawns. The bastards were multiplying. In the past week, hundreds more had been discovered taped to the bottom of chairs, staplers, mouse pads. Others were secreted more ingeniously — after our TV remote failed, an inspection revealed that its batteries had been replaced by two small prawns in advanced stages of decay. It was now common to see people carefully sniff their documents, after a rumour began that squid ink had been introduced to the printer’s toner.
‘What’s wrong, Toby?’ Archibald asked.
‘It’s the prawns, mate.’
‘What’s really wrong?’
‘My girlfriend just broke up with me.’
‘Heartache is a fanged pimp.’
‘Is that your demon speaking?’
‘No, that’s me.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I admitted.
‘There’s little compensation for you now,’ Archibald said. ‘Your pain is the natural consequence of intimacy. They can’t be separated. But I won’t philosophise, Toby. I’m sorry you’re hurting, and I’m happy just to listen to you.’
I sat humbled. There seemed to flow from Archibald a simple, unadorned decency. But then, I had thought the same thing about Charlie Rose.
‘What do I do, Archie?’
‘Keep faith.’
‘In what?’
‘In your capacity for love. You don’t regret it, do you?’
What I regretted was moving to Canberra, but I thought it churlish to admit that now. ‘No.’
‘And nor should you. Let that sustain you until the pain subsides.’
Over at the printer, Susie tentatively sniffed some pages and vomited.
‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘But you can and you have to.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘When did you find God?’
‘When Margaret died.’
‘Margaret?’
‘My dear wife. She passed a decade ago.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘You know what Chesterton said? There is nothing more frightening than a labyrinth without a centre. That was my grief, Toby: a labyrinth without a centre. But then I found the confessions of Augustine, and contemplation became more urgent. More personal. I was still in a labyrinth, but one that I felt had a centre — Him. Augustine was my guide to the middle.’
‘How do you handle Tourette’s?’
‘I’ve made peace with my demon.’
‘You have?’
‘Yes. It humbled me. It helped cure my intellectual vanity.’
‘What’s wrong with intellectual vanity?’
‘Well, for one, it was distancing me from Him.’
‘Oh.’
‘My parents always talked about the importance of an inner life, Toby. Having a head filled with interesting furniture, they’d say. I’m not saying I possess a great intellect. I don’t. I’m of modest intelligence. Others designed the furniture. I was just a hungry curator. At a young age, I discovered the pleasure of contemplation, but it was artificial, almost entirely aesthetic.
‘I was a smug guardian of my head. I regulated what it absorbed. I’ve never watched pornography, Toby. I’ve rarely watched TV, this place excepted. Yet my tapeworm spat the crudest vituperation — words and concepts I was barely conscious of. And what this told me, Toby, was that contrary to my belief in my own discernment, I am more sponge than gatekeeper. This is a very humbling thing to—’ Archie was cruelly interrupted by a stream of profanity, and jogged off to the Vault.*
[* ‘But you’ve learnt nothing, mate. You’re still as pretentious as three hats on a pony.’
I told Garry that I hadn’t heard this delicious slice of idiom either, but that unlike his other one — about a quark with a driver’s licence — it did chime authentically.]
I stared at my computer screen. Robot pilots. More than ever, the speech seemed grotesquely trivial, and I considered escapin
g to the pub. But Archie’s candour braced me. Still, I wasn’t sure how to write a speech that was stunned by paradox: its existence was predicated on concealing its own redundancy. My fingers rested dumbly on the wet keyboard. The screen’s cursor blinked. Then … our PA system spoke. Attention, attention! It’s that time of the month again! It’s … WILD WEDNESDAY! I could hear John groaning from the fishbowl.
Time for you DARING folks to let your hair down. Free face-painting for all workers is now available in the lobby, where we’ll also be selling crazy Wild Wednesday rubber bracelets! Proceeds will go to purchasing next month’s face paint. Don’t be shy!
I was never told about Wild Wednesday. I wished I had been. Corporate attempts at encouraging morale have always induced homicidal wrath in me. While studying at university, I once worked in the call centre for a company that shamelessly made and sold impaired hearing aids. When I learned of an imminent day of ‘team bonding’ — a treasure hunt in the local shopping mall, where we’d be made to wear pirate costumes — I decided to sabotage the event by calling and pretending to be a fanatically aggrieved customer, tipped off to our excursion and now threatening to individually ‘pick maggots off’ with a telescopic rifle:
‘Hello, Crystal Clear, Claire speaking.’
‘Hello?’
‘Hello. This is Claire speaking — how may I help you?’
‘Bear?’
‘Claire. How might I help you, sir?’
‘Listen, Bear, I’m struggling to hear you, and the reason for that is you’ve sold me two expensive craps to fit in my ears.’
‘I’m sorry about that, sir.’
‘Can’t hear you, Bear. But you can hear me. So listen …’
Before my eyes had dried, my phone rang. It was Stanley. He had another job for me. What he didn’t know was that I was teetering on the edge.
‘What I’m about to tell you is confidential, Toby.’
‘Sure.’
‘We haven’t gone public with this yet.’
‘Understood.’
‘But the Minister is very excited about it.’
‘Then so am I.’
‘We’ve been designing a pilot program with DSP’ — the Department of Sport and Pride.
‘What is it?’
‘Well, we’re going to re-create the conditions that gave birth to our greatest ever bowler.’
‘Terry Alderman?’
‘Warnie, you weird prick.’
‘How?’
‘We’ll install bakeries and tobacconists at every cricketing academy in the country.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘We’re calling it “Back to the Future”.’
‘You’re not joking?’
‘Talent scouting’s ineffective, Toby. And biomechanics can only refine talent — it can’t produce it. Plus, it’s fucking boring. There’re no myths in biomechanics. The public can’t get excited by seeing talent improve through discipline and science. The people don’t want automatons, Toby. They want talent that flourishes … unexpectedly.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What’s more, the people are fucking sick of corporatised cricket. And I can’t blame them. They hate the sport’s administrators. Hate how they gag their athletes. Hate the political correctness and the five-year plans. It’s all so fucking sterile. And you know what?’
‘What?’
‘It’s lethal to larrikins. You follow?’
‘Not really.’
‘The corporates have cut a link to our past. Cricket strategy used to be: Unbutton your shirt, son, and go break some Pom jaws. Now it’s a 10-point plan written by an ethics committee. The sport’s a fucking shell, Toby. The suits have hollowed it out. We’ve allowed these cunts to rob athletes of their personality and the public of their legends. And has this new order created on-field success? Please. Has it created another Warnie? Like fuck it has. So we have a plan to restore that golden grit to our game, while encouraging the conditions necessary for genius to flourish.’
‘With pies and smokes.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Wasn’t Warne’s talent in spite of the pies and smokes, and not because of them?’
‘Well, it obviously didn’t harm his talent, did it? And you’re not listening, Toby: the public love this shit.’
‘Wouldn’t selling smokes at sports academies break the law?’
‘We’re working on repealing … unfriendly legislation. Plus, we’d also give the kids access to vapes.’
‘Vapes?’
‘E-cigs. An emerging technology. We’re the department of innovation, after all. So instead of Winnie Blues, the next Warnie might be dependent upon a cherry-flavoured vape pen. A millennial twist on an old theme. We’re cool with that. We get that times change. We’ll also encourage Cricket Australia to allow senior players to vape on-field. During games. The problem, though, is that e-cigs might not have the same effects as the old-fashioned dart.’
‘What kind of effects?’
‘Well for one, the suggestion of rebelliousness. We’re not sure if the e-cig will have the same filthy je ne sais quoi as the Winnie Blue. It’ll depend on how well they can diminish life expectancy. Right now, we just don’t know. The science isn’t in. But fingers crossed, they’ll prove just as dangerous as the old shit.’
‘Why would you want them to be dangerous?’
‘Toby, you’re not listening. It’s what gives the public frisson. It’s what gives them the drama of human contradiction. That’s what the public want. Humans that gamble with their talent. Humans that contain multitudes. Humans that resemble them.’
‘So you want to create another Warnie?’
‘Yes.’
‘With pies and smokes.’
‘Correct.’
‘And you want a speech from me?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘We want a PowerPoint show, Toby. We’ve basically got the words, we just need you to finesse them into some sexy slides. We’ve got some good ideas. You’ll open with — get this — a pie chart.’
‘Right.’
‘Do you get it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a pie chart about pies, Toby.’
‘I get it.’
‘Exciting. Now, what this chart will do, Toby, is declare the pie’s contribution to cricket legend.’
‘How?’
‘Great question. We’ve given this a lot of thought. Picture this: the chart will be divided into six segments.’
‘Okay.’
‘And each segment will contain a single word written in what looks like a swirl of tomato sauce. Cute, right? FYI, you’ll need to find a font that looks like tomato sauce. Something red. And squiggly.’
‘What are the six words?’
‘Close your eyes.’
‘Alright.’
‘Are they closed?’
‘Yes.’
‘The six words are: Genius. Larrikin. Hero. Battler. Icon. And … Succulent All-Beef Mrs. Macs.’
‘That’s not six words.’
‘That last one doesn’t count. That’s a sponsor’s request. You might need to shrink the sauce font for that one.’
‘Sponsor?’
‘It’s a public–private partnership, Toby. That’s how the world works now.’
‘It sounds like we’re just reintroducing outlawed sponsorships for a sport that’s financially suffering.’
‘That’s terribly cynical, Toby.’
‘I don’t understand. Are you fighting the suits, or helping them?’
‘Both, Toby. That’s the genius of it. We’re fighting them publicly; helping them privately. It’s what we call a win-win.’
‘So Cricket Australia’s willing to be bashed publicly by the government, so that spons
orship laws can be repealed and their commercial viability improved. And the government’s willing to do this so that it can leverage nostalgia.’
‘Neat summary.’
‘It’s all just a fucking game to you, isn’t it?’
‘Mate, it’s the greatest game there is.’
Suddenly, I saw every one of my ambitions and fine intentions reduced to a massive pile of ash. Around that pile, a choir held hands and sang songs of derision. A wind blew, and the ash swirled, and Ms. West held hands with Bessie, who held hands with my dead father, who held hands with Stanley, who held hands with an angry pensioner, and their songs were sung in a strange tongue I couldn’t understand, but I could grasp the obscene pleasure they felt in singing them.*
[* ‘How the fuck do you hold hands with an eel?’ Garry asked.
‘Mate, it was a reverie.’
‘A reverie?’
‘A daydream.’
‘Tonight, while you sleep, I’m gonna shiv you.’]
Enraged, I impulsively leaked the cricket stuff to the national paper. I did so anonymously, but I didn’t much think about how easy the contact tracing would be. When the first story appeared online, it was obvious to everyone who the source was.
John stuck his head outside the fishbowl and screamed my name. His face was painted like a Burmese cat, but you could still tell he was angry. I walked into his office and took a seat. John slammed the door.
‘Let’s get a fucking few things straight, Toby. You’re not a balladeer. You’re not a troubadour. You’re not a charming rebel. You’re not influential. You’re not Forrest Gump. What you are—’
‘Yes?’
‘—is a cunt.’
‘Okay.’
‘We know you leaked it.’
I just sat there. Said nothing. I didn’t have the strength to deny it. I don’t think I wanted to.
John sighed. ‘We’re taking a fucking walk, Toby.’
‘Where?’
‘We’re off to see the Wizard.’
The Wizard was the secretary of the department. Ensconced on level six, she’d studied at the JFK School of Governance in DC, and conventional wisdom held that she was both sharp and brutal.
We sat silently in the waiting area. John refused to look at me, and was pretending to be absorbed in a trade publication he’d picked up from the table. On the opposing couch were two men in suits I didn’t recognise. Sky News was playing on the wall: The Prime Minister has conceded that his comments about water polo were ‘hasty’, but has stopped short of apologising. In a media conference held today at a public swimming pool, the opposition leader described the PM as ‘out of touch’ and demanded his resignation before telling reporters to ‘watch this’ as he performed a cannonball into the water. In other news, leaked documents have suggested the federal government was looking at legalising Big Tobacco’s re-entry into cricket sponsorship …