Checkers (5 page)

By the time the six o'clock news rolled around everyone had his stories ready. The Premier said Mr Koneckny had assured him there was no truth in the morning newspaper's report, and he himself had not interfered with the tendering process in any way. He had met Jack only a couple of times at social functions, the last one of which was the Derby two years before, and he had never met Dad. The story was just another media beat-up, and typical of the
Advocate
's bias against the Government. The Deputy Chairman of the Commission said he had never been approached by Mr Koneckny in a manner that could be seen as prejudicial to the Commission's proceedings; the Commission's deliberations had at all times remained confidential and impartial; the Commission had had no dealings with Jack or Dad apart from their appearances at the hearings. The story was just another media beat-up, and typical of the
Advocate
's bias against the Commission. Jack and Dad issued a joint statement saying that they had no prior knowledge, that they had at all times acted properly, and that the last time Jack had spoken to the Premier was two years ago, in a crowd at the Derby. Dad had never spoken to him. The story was just another media beat-up, and typical of the
Advocate
's bias against the business sector.

I watched it until I felt sick. Mum wasn't home, and neither was Dad, of course. Mark watched it with me, but when I tried to talk to him about it he wouldn't answer, just went off to his bedroom. So I took Checkers out to the park again.

Somehow, even Checkers doing canine aerobics from one end of the park to the other didn't make me feel any better. People say dogs are sensitive to their owner's moods, but I don't think Checkers was too tuned in to mine. Or maybe he did know how nervous and depressed I was feeling, and deliberately did idiotic things to cheer me up. One thing's for sure, he was even madder than normal that day. He stole a jumper that a man had left lying on the ground while he pushed his little daughter backwards and forwards on the swing. Checkers, for no reason at all, grabbed the jumper and trotted away proudly holding it in his mouth. I gasped, then shouted: ‘Checkers! Bad dog! Put it down! Checkers! Come here!' The man saw what was going on, and he started chasing Checkers, who thought this was a great new game. He accelerated. For about five minutes the two of us, followed by the little kid, chased Checkers around and around. Even though his feet got tangled up in the jumper a few times, he was too fast and too smart for us. When we got close to him he showed the whites of his eyes and charged through the gap. Twice I touched on a back leg, but I couldn't get a grip, and away he went again. I felt frustrated and embarrassed that I couldn't control him, and angry that he was making me look stupid in front of the man and his daughter.

I don't think the man was very amused. He didn't chuck a tantrum or anything—he even made a couple of half-jokes about it—but he didn't look too happy. Finally he grabbed Checkers' hindquarters as Checkers scuttled past, and we were able to wrestle the jumper out of his mouth. It had a few holes in it, but it wasn't too bad. I kept apologising and grovelling, while the little girl clung to her father's legs and looked at me like I was a serial killer. I suppose to her I was just another big scary stranger. Worse, I was a big scary stranger who owned a savage killer dog.

They went. I was too depressed to be mad at Checkers. I sat on the swing while he romped around me, trying to get me to play. After a while he gave up on me and went off and started sniffing the rubbish tins.

I sat there a long time. I had some childish idea that if I sat there long enough they'd miss me and come and look for me. They didn't, of course. After an hour or two it got so cold I had to go back. By then even Checkers was sick of the park and was lying near me, watching from under his eyelids, waiting to see when I'd make a move. It always cracked me up when he did that. His eyes looked so intelligent, peering out of that crazy checked coat.

Lately I've started to feel too safe, too comfortable in this hospital. No, not comfortable, just secure. Like I'm getting scared to leave, to go back to the outside world. The real world, everyone here calls it, as though this is an unreal world. Of course it is in a way; everyone on drugs, everyone depressed or crazy, no-one working. Even the few things here that are meant to be like the outside world—school and the kiosk and the bank—aren't like anything I've seen before.

But in some ways this world is more real than the one outside. In here the masks are off, people don't pretend so much. We still fake it when we can, but most of the time we don't have the energy or the strength. We've all hit the rocks or we wouldn't be here; when you're drowning you don't worry so much about how you look or what you say or whether you've got a nice swimming style.

I keep a mask on even here though, more than just about anyone. It's a different mask to the one I wore outside. That was the coolness mask, trying to look cool, dress cool, say all the right things, never putting a foot wrong. That failed me and I ended up in here. Now I have the mask of silence: my cold frozen one, where I don't risk showing anything. It's a kind of non-mask mask. Talking to Esther, two nights ago, talking to Oliver occasionally, they're the only times I've opened up a bit. I don't risk it much with the therapists, even Dr Singh, and I never risk it in Group.

When I think about the other kids, though, I suppose most of them do still keep some sort of mask here. That is, when they're not crying or talking honestly about their lives, their problems. Cindy's mask is to be tough and aggressive sometimes, whiney and pathetic other times. Emine's is to be sweet and kind to everyone. Ben, well, his is pretty obvious, keeping on the move, being stupid, never staying in one place long enough for anyone to get to know him. Oliver, he's sort of polite and reserved: a bit like me, only I'm colder. Daniel, I don't think he has a mask. He just keeps away from anyone he thinks might be cruel to him. Oh wait, yes, I guess he does hide stuff. He usually acts pretty laid back, making witty jokes about everything, but I know from things he's said in Group that he's not very happy inside.

Guess none of us are happy, no matter how much we pretend, or we wouldn't be here.

Esther, now she really doesn't have a mask. I used to think she was too crazy to bother with one; too crazy to put one together. But now I think it's more that she's a very honest person. From the way she describes her family—the way they used to live—I'd say they just weren't into the fakery that's an everyday thing in my life, my world.

That's what I like most about dogs. They don't wear masks, ever. Checkers never had a mask. What you saw was what you got. When Checkers felt sad his tail drooped, his head drooped, his ears drooped. When he felt guilty he walked past you quite quickly, on his toes, keeping a safe distance and looking at you out of the corners of his eyes. When he was happy, which was most of the time, he sparkled around the house, whooping and yelling with joy, tail out of control.

In Group today, Marj tried to get Emine to say more. I mean to really say something. Emine talks plenty in Group, but it wasn't till Marj started working on her that I realised Emine's comments are always about other people. It's like when the spotlight is focussed on her she grabs it and quickly turns it on to someone else. Marj is pretty smart at times. Emine is school phobic, something I'd never heard of before. When I did have it explained to me, by Oliver actually, I thought it was a joke. I mean, doesn't every kid have school phobia? Oliver didn't think it was a joke, but he never quite succeeded in convincing me.

When Marj put the heat on her today, Emine got pretty upset. At first she sounded as sweet and natural as ever, but gradually her voice dropped and her head went down and her beautiful dark skin got even darker. She said she didn't know why she had been put in hospital, there was nothing wrong with her. Well, we've all said that sometime in here. The stupid thing about psych wards is that one of your symptoms is you think nothing's wrong with you, and that's a very serious symptom. So probably the whole population should be in here, because most people think there's not too much wrong with them. I got that from
Catch-22
.

And the more you complain that you're fine, the longer they're likely to keep you here. Catch-22 again.

For a long time this morning Emine was saying she was happy at school, happy at home, loved her parents, had lots of friends . . . Then gradually she started being more honest. Seems like her parents wanted to control every aspect of her life. They were so strict and made her dress so conservatively that she felt conspicuous at school. She was embarrassed to talk to other kids because their lives seemed so different. She couldn't ask anyone home because her family lived in such a traditional way that she thought they'd look like freaks . . . even though there were quite a few students from other cultures at her school, and quite a few of them lived in traditional ways at home. But at school they acted like their lives were episodes from an American sitcom.

That was one thing her school had in common with mine.

Emine went to an all-girls' school, same as me, except that hers wasn't a private one. But there was a girl there, Turkish-Australian, same as Emine, who had a brother who'd seen Emine at the bus stop, and he really liked her. I could see why: Emine is one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen, with her long black hair and dark eyes, like chocolate, dark chocolate.

The brother wanted to ring Emine, but Emine knew that wouldn't work, because her parents screened her phone calls and would never allow her to talk to a boy. So they agreed the other girl would ring up and ask to talk to Emine. She would say they had to discuss some homework. When Emine was given the phone the girl would put her brother on.

It worked the first two times but then it fell apart. Emine was talking to the boy when her father got suspicious. He lifted the extension phone to listen. As soon as Emine heard the click on the line she knew what was happening, but the boy was talking and did not hear it. He continued to talk on happily as Emine stood there trembling. When Emine's father heard the male voice he stormed in and cut off the call. He started hitting Emine around the head as she backed away, screaming. Her mother ran in. When she realised what Emine had done, she was horrified, scandalised, but at least she wouldn't let her husband beat Emine, which was what he wanted to do. But all evening they shouted at her, telling her how she had disgraced them, shamed them.

Emine said the worst thing was that both of them, but especially her mother, assumed that Emine had been meeting the boy, doing awful things with him. They told her she was a slut.

I thought that anyone less like a slut than Emine was hard to imagine.

This was the worst thing because up till then Emine and her mother had got on well, had supported each other when her father was being especially outrageous and unreasonable. Now her mother turned on her and made it clear that she didn't trust her at all.

After that, Emine found it more and more difficult to go to school. She imagined that everyone knew about her disgrace, that they were all talking about her. She was embarrassed to tell her friend that the brother could not call any more, even though the girl, coming from a similar background, seemed to understand. But to Emine, every other girl at school seemed to have such a free and easy life, able to go down the shopping centre after school, go out at nights, talk freely to boys, even choose their own boyfriends.

‘I started getting sick,' she whispered. ‘And I couldn't go to school. It was terrible. I had stomach cramps, I was vomiting, I got these awful headaches.' She missed a day or two a week, then three or four days a week, till she was hardly going at all. Gradually the counsellor at school, then doctors and social workers, got involved. Things built up to a point where one night, when the doctor was talking to her, Emine became hysterical. That's the night she ended up in hospital.

For Emine, like for all of us in one way or another, coming in here wasn't the end of our problems. In some ways it was just the start. Emine's parents freaked out. They couldn't cope. They thought it was more shame, more disgrace for the family.

One of the things Emine found hardest in Group was talking about her parents. She felt it was disloyal to criticise them in front of us. She felt it was disloyal to criticise them at all. Even though she was so nice to Cindy, in Group and out of it, she was shocked at the way Cindy spoke about her parents.

I'm a bit like that too. Most of us are, I think. Writing about stuff in here is easier than saying it out loud in Group. It's especially hard when my father's been in the news so much. I don't want to make things any worse for him than they are already. I'm scared that if I say stuff in here it might get out to the papers or on TV or something. I feel that the other kids, and even the staff, are too curious about our family, wanting to know how much of what they read was true. I feel I've done enough damage already.

So I can sympathise with Emine. Funny really, I sympathise with everyone in here, even Cindy.

Everyone except one person.

The more Checkers grew, the funnier his coat looked. The black and white squares got more conspicuous, and because none of them matched up, he looked like a weird moving chess game. People laughed at them, at him, but he didn't mind. He trotted self-importantly down the street, taking no notice of people, intent on the lampposts and garden walls and footpaths. He could have been mistaken for a piece of paving that escaped from a driveway and went feral.

Normally I hate to stand out. I don't like being conspicuous. I was conspicuous when I was walking Checkers, but it wasn't the same, because the attention was directed at him, not me. Anyway I liked him so much I wouldn't have cared if he looked like the Abominable Snowman.

We got pretty conspicuous when the
Advocate
broke its story, of course. Over the years I'd become used to being envied by some girls. I hadn't noticed it when I was little, but by about Grade 4 I knew what was going on. I'd worked out what counted. You had to have the big house, the right car, the glamorous-looking mum. And by Grade 4, I knew our house and our cars and my mum were good enough.

In those days, even when Rider Group got negative publicity, it never altered the main things. Rider Group was so big, so powerful, that nothing really touched it. But this story was different. It was too big to go away. The papers, TV, radio, they all ran with it. Reporters started calling the house, even turning up at odd times of day looking for a story. Dad and Mum kept warning us not to talk to them: not that we needed much warning. Like I said, we'd been taught from our cradles to be discreet, not to repeat things that we heard from Jack or Dad.

I got into a routine when a reporter came to the house. Mark usually left it to me to answer the bell. I'd open the door and there'd be this smooth-looking man or woman, sometimes with a photographer, sometimes not.

‘Yes?' I'd go.

‘Uh, is Mr Warner home?'

‘No, he's not.'

‘Do you know what time he'll be back?'

‘Yes, but he doesn't give interviews at home. You'll have to call his office.'

‘Are you his daughter?'

‘Sorry, I'm not allowed to talk to you guys.'

‘Well, could I just ask you . . .'

‘Sorry, I think the washing machine's flooding again.' And I'd close the door.

As time went on, my excuses for shutting the door got more and more bizarre, till Mark used to listen from the dining room, his hand over his mouth to stop himself laughing. ‘Sorry, I think the oven's just exploded . . . Sorry, I'm missing “Wheel of Fortune” . . . my baby needs its nappies changing . . . my brother'll escape if I don't get in there and tie him up properly . . .'

I didn't make those jokes when TV cameras were there, of course. I didn't want to see myself on the evening news saying dumb things. But it was nice to be able to shut the door in people's faces and not get in trouble for it.

There was a lull for a few days after the
Advocate
's triple-header story, when they didn't seem to come up with anything new. I thought the whole thing would die a natural death, which is what Dad always said would happen. No such luck. The next shock came about a week later, when the TV show ‘Day's End' fired a whole new blast. It was the lead story, at six o'clock, and they'd been advertising it all afternoon, so we knew it was coming. Mark and I were the only ones home. Mark stood in the doorway watching, but kind of half-hidden behind the door. I lounged in the big red armchair with Checkers' head on my lap. I was scratching his ear as I started watching, but I soon stopped doing that and concentrated on the screen.

It was pretty bad. Somehow, probably illegally, they'd got hold of telephone records from Mr Koneckny's private number. They'd found eight overseas phone calls to American hotels and, by a strange coincidence, they were the same hotels where members of the Casino Commission were staying on their tour of overseas casinos. The dates matched exactly. Most of the conversations were around five to ten minutes, but the longest was an hour and a half.

As if that wasn't enough they'd traced a whole lot of payments, that they said were secret, from Rider Group to overseas. One of them was to a company in the Bahamas, but at least it wasn't the one that bought the shares. None of the companies looked too good, though. They were all funny shadowy little ones in overseas countries, companies that had untraceable directors and paid-up capitals of anything from two dollars to a thousand. Not good. The payments came to about four and a half million dollars in eight months and, according to ‘Day's End', they didn't show up in Rider Group accounts.

The Opposition, with Mrs O'Shea in full flight, was calling for a Royal Commission. Mrs O'Shea said the scandal had now come right into the Premier's office and the only way for people to be satisfied was to have a full inquiry. It was the first time I'd heard it called a scandal. The Deputy Chairman was under huge pressure, because he'd issued a statement after the
Advocate
story to say they'd only had a few, official, contacts with Mr Koneckny.

The one piece of good news so far was that there was no connection between the Premier, Koneckny, the Commission, and Dad and Jack. Mark and I knew there must be a connection, because how else would we have known we'd got the contract way back in March? The secret was safe with us, but how many other people were in the know?

As soon as the story ended, Mark disappeared to his bedroom. I had no-one I could talk to. I went to bed early and slept badly.

Next morning on the radio came the news of the first victim. Or sacrifice, as some people called him. The Premier announced that Mr Koneckny had been sacked for misleading him. He said Mr Koneckny had had contacts with the Commission on his own initiative, without telling the Premier. His motives were good but he couldn't be allowed to have his own agenda, and so he had reluctantly asked for Mr Koneckny's resignation. I stayed home, partly because I couldn't face school, partly because I wanted to see what else would happen. By lunchtime the Commission's Deputy Chairman had resigned, denying wrongdoing but admitting that he had ‘forgotten' some ‘inconsequential' chats with Mr Koneckny.

By three o'clock Jack had issued a statement that any conversations between Koneckny and anyone else were none of Rider Group's business, and it shouldn't get in the way of their job, which was to build and operate the casino. At 3.25 p.m. the Premier was interviewed on the ‘George Polaris Show': he said that nothing had changed. The best tender had won the contract and no review was needed.

On the evening news Dad was interviewed. He said that Rider Group had done nothing improper with its transfers of money around the world. It was normal business practice, but the details had to remain confidential. They couldn't let their competitors know everything they were doing.

Dad looked tired and irritated. To my surprise he walked in the door about five minutes after the interview ended. He looked even worse than he had on TV.

‘I just saw you,' I said.

‘Saw me? Oh, you mean on TV. They taped that this afternoon.' He sorted through the mail. ‘So, how'd I look?'

‘Tired.'

‘Oh well. That figures. How'd I sound?'

‘Convincing.'

‘Good.'

‘It's a bit of a mess, isn't it?'

‘Typical business problems. We're not worried. We've been through worse.'

‘No you haven't,' I thought. Out loud, I said, ‘There've been more reporters calling. I took a few messages. They're on the pad at the hall phone.'

‘OK, thanks honey,' he said, but I don't think he'd really heard me.

He went through to the kitchen and I followed, watching as he started to make a sandwich. ‘What's in the fridge?' he asked, as he spread the bread.

I opened the door and reported. ‘Couple of slices of ham, turning up at the edges. Half a tomato. Bit of lettuce. Lots of cheese. Pâté, but I don't like the colour of it.'

‘OK, I'll have the tomato, and you pick me a cheese that looks interesting.'

‘So are you going to get out of all this?' I asked, as I sliced some cheese for him.

He shrugged. ‘Sure. It'll blow over.'

‘But it's getting so serious, with the Premier and everything.'

He was about to take his first bite of sandwich, but he stopped and looked down at a stain on the table.

‘That's the biggest thing,' he said, almost to himself, then to me he said: ‘We'll be OK as long as there's no connection between us and the Premier. Koneckny, he's an idiot. He nearly screwed the whole thing up. I warned Jack, but he wouldn't listen. But I think the damage can be stopped now. The Premier's big enough and powerful enough to do anything at the moment.' He shook his head, almost in admiration, and took the first bite. ‘He's amazing,' he said, through the sandwich, smiling at me. ‘He just does what he wants. No-one's strong enough to stand up to him. The press, the Opposition, least of all his own party. They're pretty pathetic really.'

My father always seemed to have too much respect for strong people, people like Jack.

‘Do you know him?' I asked, trying to look cool, but holding my breath as I waited for the answer.

‘The Premier? No, never met him before in my life.'

I knew he was lying. Or else why'd he say ‘before'?