The Big Ask (26 page)

But a four-grand outlay in a single shopping expedition was my personal limit so I put the mobile on hold. ‘I'd need a handbag to carry it around in,' I told Red. ‘Let's wait until they start making them small enough to fit into a man's pocket without it looking like he's got a canoe in his pants.'

We took our infrastructure home and set it up in Red's bedroom for convenience. Convenient for him, since he promptly invited Tarquin around to test its game-play capabilities.

I wangled enough access on Sunday to write a brief circular, ‘What Murray Whelan Can Bring to Melbourne Upper', then spent most of the afternoon pecking it out with two fingers and playing around with fonts. Red, meanwhile, was also enmeshed in paperwork, rushing to finish neglected assignments in time for his return to school. Fortunately, we both finished our chores in time to watch
The Blues Brothers
on television.

Monday morning, after Red went back to school, I took my flyer to Qwik Print, then spent the rest of the day stuffing and addressing 800 envelopes. By the time I'd mailed them and spent a couple of hours calling names on the Melbourne Upper register, the news was out. Predicated on Labor's loss of the next election, a new faction had emerged, an alliance between the hard-left, the medium-right and the double-adaptors. Suddenly all bets were off in the dozens of preselection contests currently in progress.

Tuesday was Donny's funeral. I drove out to the crematorium chapel at Fawkner cemetery and took a pew at the back beside a contingent of his old workmates from the brewery. For the requiem of a murderer-suicide, the numbers were respectable, about forty of us, all up. Some of the faces were familiar from parties of the left, both the boozy and political varieties. There were enough old flames in evidence to do credit to the deceased's memory as a lover.

Jacinta sat in the front row, ashen-faced under a black mantilla. She looked like she hadn't slept a wink since the discovery of the body. She and Donny had been together for little more than a year, so her status as official widow was somewhat tenuous. Meg Taylor, to whom he'd been legally married for most of the seventies, didn't appear eager to contest the title. She was sitting further back, paired with a woman in her mid-twenties that I took to be Ellie, the little daughter she'd taken into the relationship.

Donny's brother Rodney sat across the aisle beside a couple in their seventies who could only have been the parents. The mother was withered and shrunken, her clawlike fingers hooked over a walking stick. The father was more robust. From time to time during the service, he glanced disapprovingly back over his shoulder, as if those assembled were the bad company he'd warned his son against, the ones who'd led him to a sticky end. Heather was sitting beside him and she didn't need to look around for me to know she agreed.

In accordance with the known wishes of the deceased, there was no god-bothering and the bare minimum of ceremony. A civil celebrant conducted the proceedings, possibly an employee of the funeral company. Reading from notes, he summarised Donny's life in tones of anodyne sincerity that conveyed the man's biography but none of his essence. The only allusion to the circumstances of Donny's death lay in the use of the words ‘tragic' and ‘untimely'.

Donny perished a paid-up member of the union, so the Haulers sent the customary wreath. It was one of a number, including mine, that sat atop the Eureka flag that draped the coffin, half buried in the individual long-stemmed red carnations that we were each handed as we arrived. A pair of drumsticks lay there, too, placed by the bass player from Over the Limit, who tiptoed with awkward reverence up the aisle in his cowboy boots. Roscoe and Len, Donny's putative running mates, turned away shamefaced when I looked their way.

The only surprise, to me at least, was provided by a largeboned, soft-spoken woman in her early thirties who got up after Rodney had done his brotherly recollection bit. Hesitantly, she introduced herself as Donny's daughter, born without his knowledge and adopted by an Adelaide couple. When she recently contacted him, after careful consideration, she said, Donny had expressed surprise and delight to find that he had a long-lost child. The two of them had spoken on the phone several times and planned to meet at Christmas during her annual leave. Although that encounter would now never take place, and she had never actually met her birthfather, she wanted to add her farewells to those of his legitimate family.

For some reason, this brief and barely audible announcement, delivered by a diffident stranger, struck me as providing the most compelling argument yet that Donny had not killed himself.

As the remains rolled slowly through the portals of immolation, the John Lennon version of ‘Stand By Me' came over the PA. Somebody was doing their best to lend occasion to the occasion. It succeeded only in sounding cheesy. In the silence that followed, an off-key voice began to sing ‘Solidarity Forever'. We battened onto the familiar anthem with collective gusto but began to falter when we got to the verse about nothing being weaker than the feeble strength of one. After the first chorus we took it no further.

Afterwards, as the crowd dispersed into the overcast afternoon, I approached Jacinta. We shook hands and shared our bereavement in a moment of mutual silence. If Donny had discussed our last conversation with her, she gave no sign of it. When I turned to go, she touched my arm.

‘You have my vote,' she said.

‘Excuse me?'

‘For preselection. You have my vote.'

‘You're a member of the Labor Party?'

‘You sound surprised. Did you think I was a mail-order bride? I used to work for the Textile Workers Union. That's how I met Donny, trying to organise a blackban on the transport of garments made by out-workers.'

‘I didn't know,' I said. Hardly a novel phenomenon when it came to the multitudinous facets of Donny's life.

‘Twenty of us Filipinas are members of the Reservoir branch,' she said. ‘I'll make sure the others vote for you, too.'

I thanked her, somewhat disconcerted that my bullshit activities had raised their head at such a time.

‘Donny would've wanted it,' she said. ‘You were a true friend.'

Others hovered, waiting their turn. I kissed Jacinta on the cheek and went out into the leaden afternoon, thinking about truth and friendship. And about their obligations.

Three days before the preselection poll an item arrived in the mail. Bearing only a franking stamp and a printed address label, it gave no external clue as to its sender. Inside was a printed flyer headed ‘Why Angelo Agnelli is Unfit to Represent Melbourne Upper'.

Because, it stated, he was an oppressor of women. A sexual harasser and serial sleazebag. Instead of putting his hand to the tiller of state, he'd been sticking it up every skirt in sight. Or words to that effect. The overall tone was a melange of lesbian separatism, pop psychology and fundamentalist moralising. The spelling was appalling. No examples were cited, no names named, no evidence presented. This, the communiqué claimed, was out of respect for the privacy of the women who had been so shamefully used by the ‘contempteble predater Agnelli'.

There is only one alternative, concluded the document. SEND THE CHAUVANIST PACKING—VOTE FOR LYNDAL LUSCOMBE.

For the benefit of readers from non-English-speaking backgrounds, these charges were repeated on the obverse in all the main food groups—Greek, Italian, Turkish and Arabic.

Since I'd been sent one, it was reasonable to assume that everyone else on the Melbourne Upper party roll had also received a copy. I took Lyndal's card from my wallet and started dialling. It took some trying, but eventually I got through. She was not a happy camper. In between taking calls she'd tried to ring me, unable to raise an answer because the phone was unplugged.

‘It wasn't me,' she said.

‘I didn't think so,' I assured her. ‘Your spelling's better that that.'

‘This isn't funny, Murray. It's a dirty trick. Whoever did this has really screwed my credibility. Makes me look like a complete bitch.'

‘Doesn't exactly make Angelo look great,' I said.

‘An anonymous shit-sheet? Malicious, unsubstantiated allegations, barely literate. He doesn't even need to dignify it with a reply. Meanwhile, I look like I'm peddling half-baked slander. This sort of thing is a male nightmare. Not only will it cost me support in Melbourne Upper, it'll frighten the horses in Canberra. God, I wish I knew who was responsible. I'd strangle them with my bare hands.'

‘Issue a statement refuting it,' I said. ‘Disavow all knowledge, say that you've been set up, your name used without your permission or approval.'

‘And add fuel to the fire? It'll look like I'm having a two-way bet, running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.'

‘If you don't want to put out a statement, then I will,' I proposed. ‘I can deplore it as both an attempt to blacken Angelo and a bid to discredit you. Try to minimise the damage all round.'

‘And make yourself look terrific in the process.'

‘That's unfair,' I said.

‘Probably. Right now I think my only option might be to withdraw from the ballot. Demonstrate my good faith with an act of self-sacrifice, try to cut my potential losses with the boys in the national back room.'

‘Might be a better idea to find out who's responsible first,' I suggested. ‘See if you can expose the source.'

‘Spend the last couple of days of the race running around interrogating people, come across as a complete paranoid? No thanks. Face it, Murray, there's only one person who really stands to benefit. And I never dreamed he'd stoop to something like this.'

I wasn't going to ask who she meant. I might not have liked her answer. Leaving her pondering her options, I rang Angelo. He took some tracking down, but I ran him to ground at party headquarters.

‘Of course I've seen it,' he said. ‘And naturally I don't like it, leaves a bad taste in the mouth and there's always a risk that a little bit of the shit might stick. But for a man like me, a public figure, this sort of thing is an occupational hazard. And, on the up side, our Ms Luscombe has really shot herself in the foot this time.'

‘You don't actually think she's responsible, do you?'

‘Probably one of her rabid femo-nazi supporters,' he said. ‘Whoever did it, it's a potential windfall for us. If I react, I'll look defensive. But you can capitalise on the opportunity. Put out a statement. Independent non-aligned candidate deplores the use of underhanded tactics. Parliamentary aspirants should be able to keep their more extreme supporters in line. Unwarranted attack on a man of unimpeachable character. So on and so forth. Criticise the policies, not the man. Perhaps not that bit. I'll leave the exact wording to you. I've got my hands full maintaining my outright majority on the public office selection committee, so I need a thundering endorsement from the branches. We've got to wipe the floor with this woman. Get cracking and I'll see you on Friday, usual time and place.'

Mumbling something about him being the boss, I rang off and made myself a sandwich. Angelo was entitled to his money's worth, however, a declaration like that wouldn't do anything for my stocks with Lyndal. Better to drag my feet, see which way the cards fell. I thought about who might have been behind the letter. The potential beneficiaries, as Lyndal so pointedly pointed out, were limited. Just how desperate was Angelo getting?

I got my answer late the next morning as I was making out a grocery list. It came via a phone call from the deputy secretary of the United Haulage Workers, the ferret-faced Mike McGrath.

‘Heard the news?' he said. ‘Lyndal Luscombe has tapped the mat. Withdrew her nomination half an hour ago. Decided that shit-letter wouldn't look very good on her resume.'

‘You were behind it?' I said. ‘You arsehole. Why do something like that, just for the sake of a bit of gratuitous slander? Just can't help yourselves, can you?'

‘Don't be like that,' he said. ‘Your time has come, my friend. I'm calling with a proposition.'

‘What proposition?'

‘Bag Agnelli. Attack his competence as transport minister. Come out with a public statement as his former long-time adviser, say he isn't up to the job.'

‘Why would I do that?'

‘Because we want him out of the portfolio. There's still a year to run before the end of the government's term, don't forget.'

‘That's your motive, McGrath,' I said. ‘What's mine?'

‘Bit slow on the uptake this morning, Murray. A safe seat in parliament, that's what. If you can pick up enough of the lovely Luscombe's stray sheep to get even 25 per cent of the branch vote, I can deliver the support of our allies on the central panel. The nomination will be yours. How's that for motivation?'

‘Let me get this right,' I said. ‘All I have to do is shaft Angelo, change my allegiances, conceal my secret backers and get into bed with you.'

‘Don't be prissy. Haven't you heard, flexibility's the name of the game at the moment. I'm offering you the chance of a lifetime.'

He was right. I thought about it. Long and hard. For about five seconds. ‘Get fucked, McGrath,' I said.

‘You're a bigger fool than I thought, Whelan.'

‘Yes, but I'm my own fool, not yours.'

‘You'll come crawling,' he said.

‘Go fuck your mother, McGrath.' I hung up, added mouthwash to my shopping list, and dialled Lyndal's mobile number. She answered in a coffee shop, judging by the background noise. Either that or a steam laundry.

‘It's Murray,' I said. ‘I found out who sent the letter. McGrath at the Haulers. It's all part of their destabiliseAgnelli strategy.'

‘Makes sense,' said Lyndal. ‘I suspected I'd been caught in somebody's crossfire. I appreciate your efforts, Murray, I really do, but I've bailed. My best bet was to get out while the going was good. Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm breaking the news to a coven of my supporters, but give me a call next week. We'll talk about it over dinner and whatnot.'