‘Something to tell myself.’
‘Well, good on you. It’s young things like you who give me some hope as well. Not like my son, I’m afraid to say.’
Hazel felt herself beaming. And she didn’t even mind being called a young thing.
‘You can always look up our policy details on the website,’ she said. ‘Agriculture tops the list.’
He laughed. ‘I’m guessing it’s alphabetical,’ he said, then shook Hazel’s hand, firmly. ‘Well done, love,’ he said, released his own hand and quietly closed the door.
She felt a watermelon grin on her face.
‘Yes, well done, love,’ Adam said, teasingly.
It was beginning to feel easier. She knew this wasn’t logical and yet the shift in her mood made her think that maybe people could, after all, have a change of mind and heart. Maybe reason and compassion could prevail. And so she was overjoyed when a woman at the door, dressed for the gym, ready to spring into her silver Mercedes, denounced the treatment of asylum seekers as shameful, disgraceful. Her husband was a doctor, she said—a neurologist, actually—and many doctors were speaking out about the mistreatment of people in detention centres. Their ethical duty, she called it. Hazel ignored the neurological boast, could in fact have hugged the woman, right there, on the doorstep of her two-storey, environmental monstrosity. But no, the woman went on, she wouldn’t be voting for the Greens because they discourage individual initiative.
‘We’ll keep fighting for the closure of detention centres,’ she said, ‘but we’ll do it from within our existing structures.’
Fair enough, Hazel thought. That had to be better than lounging on a couch and flicking the remote to Better Homes and Gardens. But still she had to push a little more.
‘So you and your husband are in accord,’ she said. ‘But is there something you can do on your own? I mean, in your own capacity?’
Now she was sounding insulting. But the woman’s face was friendly, sympathetic.
‘I talk to people,’ she said. ‘Just like you.’
Hazel nodded, relieved. ‘I’m sure you know more important people than I do,’ she said. ‘More influential, I mean.’
‘I’m on a few boards, yes.’
‘So what do you say to people?’
‘I give them facts. Information. And I appeal to their sense of compassion. For those who have it.’
Hazel put on her best school-prefect smile. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘you sound exactly like a Greens voter to me. Reason and compassion are our two guiding principles.’
‘I wouldn’t press your luck, my dear.’ She smoothed down her shorts. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to do my bit at the gym.’
Hazel stepped aside and then walked towards the gate, Adam following behind, catching up.
‘I hate it when wealthy people are decent people,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad she didn’t bite my head off when I more or less said she didn’t have a mind of her own.’
‘Do you want to try the next house?’ he said. ‘You’re on a bit of a roll.’
He’d been right about things getting better.
Next up was a tall, willowy blonde, maybe in her early twenties, very pretty in a generic, cheerleader kind of way. No thanks, I vote Liberal. But she didn’t shut the door, and it was only then that Hazel noticed the book in her hands. One of those rubbish Twilight novels that kept topping the bestseller lists.
‘Have you read it?’ said the blonde.
Who must have caught her peeking.
Hazel scrambled for an answer that wouldn’t be insulting. She’d read the first one in the series just to see what all the fuss was about. Two pages in, and she’d already counted three clichés, one mixed metaphor and a laughable feminine stereotype.
‘I haven’t read it, no.’
‘It’s on one of my uni courses,’ said the blonde. ‘Gothic fiction. But it’s so badly written, I have to keep forcing myself to read it.’
Well. That was unexpected. And still she wasn’t closing the door.
‘So tell me,’ said Hazel. ‘Why do you vote Liberal? If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘Because they encourage people to work hard and make money.’ Her look suddenly turned icy. ‘And you Greenies, you’re putting heaps of people out of work. Shutting down coalmines, for starters.’
‘Well, we haven’t actually shut them down.’ Not for want of trying, Hazel thought.
‘Coal has lifted millions of people out of poverty,’ the blonde continued. ‘It’s reliable, affordable and abundant, and so much safer than nuclear.’
She’d managed to finish that book, at least: the coal industry manifesto.
‘And before coal, people burned wood, and indoors the smoke killed millions of people.’
True enough, Hazel thought. Where to now?
‘You’re absolutely right about coal,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Polly.’
‘Well, you’re absolutely right, Polly. But you need to know…’ Hazel paused. Knew she had to rephrase. ‘The thing is that coal isn’t actually cheap. It’s heavily subsidised by taxpayers but the media doesn’t tell you that. And the truth is—’ Better to rephrase again. ‘It’s also the case that the disadvantages now far outweigh the advantages, especially the rise in carbon emissions. And we all know how terrible the consequences of that will be. Rising sea levels, massive floods, widespread drought, ravaging bushfires, airborne diseases.’
‘I’ve heard all that stuff before,’ said Polly.
Maybe I should have started local, Hazel thought. ‘Did you know that climate change will hit Perth really hard?’ she said. ‘Harder than any other city in Australia? Because—’
‘I’ll move to Melbourne, then. All my friends are going there, they say it’s really cool.’
It was time to put an end to another dead-end encounter.
‘And another thing,’ said Polly. ‘Everyone thinks the Greens are all peace and love and stuff but my last boyfriend was a Green, from New South Wales he was, and he said they were fighting all the time. The loony left and the loonier right, that’s what he called them. He was just so glad to leave.’
‘Well, your party has factions too,’ said Hazel. She could hear herself sounding indignant. ‘You argue over economic policy and marriage equality and—’
‘We call it a broad church.’
Broad church, my ass, thought Hazel. What did the mainstream media call it? Robust but respectful debate in the Liberal Party, internal chaos for the Greens. She was ready to turn around, walk away, but then, on impulse, she pulled out a booklet from her satchel, offered it to the former girlfriend of a disillusioned Green. ‘Would you like a copy of this? Our vision for Perth? There’s a lot of interesting stuff—information, I mean—about job creation in renewable energies.’
Polly shrugged, took the booklet just the same. ‘Maybe I’ll give to my mum,’ she said. ‘She’s a bit infatuated with your senator. She thinks he’s cute but she wouldn’t vote for him in a million years. Maybe if he switched to the Libs, learned how to grow the economy.’
She finally closed the door.
Hazel turned to Adam. ‘People,’ she said. ‘Honestly. And I think I just wasted a booklet. I just wish I’d remembered some statistics about climate change.’
Adam waved her on, down the path and onto the verge. ‘I’m not sure the stats would have made any difference,’ he said. ‘Less than one percent rise in emissions, a twenty-centimetre rise in sea levels. It sounds so insignificant, so paltry.’
‘So how do you make people listen, let alone change their minds?’
‘Talk to them about extremes in the weather,’ he said. ‘Around the world, and at home. That’s a start. You have to grab every opportunity to make it seem real.’
He looked down at his map. His face, his voice, seemed tired now, as though he’d had enough. Of her, maybe, as well as the whole damned trudge of knocking on useless doors.
&n
bsp; ‘That was the last house,’ he said. ‘Shall we get back to the car?’
Would he ask her back for lunch again? Should she drop a hint? They began to walk in silence, Adam seemingly lost in thought, until he turned to her.
‘So that book she was reading. Polly. The gothic fiction.’
‘Oh, it’s garbage for the female masses. I only read one, to see what the big attraction is.’
‘And?’
‘Well, the romantic hero is a strong, handsome vampire, so for female readers, I guess it’s the fantasy of taming a powerful man.’
‘I see.’
‘Which is such an insulting stereotype,’ she said. ‘A lot of women like gentle men who aren’t into the trappings of power.’
He didn’t say a word.
‘Twilight’s been called an example of abstinence porn,’ she said.
He kept looking straight ahead.
‘It means the writer gets her female readers feeling all hot and heavy but the characters don’t actually have sex.’
And still he didn’t speak.
‘The author’s a Christian fundamentalist,’ she said. ‘Which doesn’t surprise me a bit. Her book’s pornographic because it’s dishonest. It’s dishonest to titillate young women and then—’
‘I think I understand, Hazel.’
Had she offended him now? Implied he was obtuse? Or maybe he was a prude. He couldn’t be a prude, surely? Sexually repressed?
‘I much prefer Jane Austen’s version of romance,’ she said, keeping her voice steady. ‘It’s about the importance of integrity, honesty, kindness, when you choose a partner. It’s a moral concept of love.’
She was sounding like an exam question: Discuss the representation of the moral concept of love in Jane Austen’s novels in relation to their social and historical context. Refer to at least one novel in detail in your answer.
Adam suddenly stopped, making her stop in her tracks as well.
‘At the risk of being patronising,’ he said, ‘you did really well today. I’m proud of you.’
She laughed. Overcome. ‘I feel like you’ve just given me a platypus stamp,’ she said. ‘My year eight English teacher used to give them to us, for effort and improvement. He’d stamp them on the inside of our wrists.’
Adam placed one finger on the inside of her wrist. ‘Consider yourself stamped,’ he said.
He had touched her only twice in two weeks: a hand lightly resting in the small of her back, a finger on her pulse. As they settled into his car, she couldn’t stop herself from leaning over and kissing him on the cheek.
‘Thanks for helping me learn,’ she said.
She saw him redden as he did up his seatbelt, felt the heavy silence that followed. She remembered Felicia’s words: that Adam wouldn’t make the plunge.
Felicia had absolutely no idea.
As Adam started up the engine, not taking his eyes off the road, he told her he had a meeting in the city but of course he would drive her home.
Of course.
So she blabbered on about her reading project…moving to the letter B…Honoré de Balzac…needing something now, anything, to lift her sinking heart.
‘Balzac was a very lonely boy at school,’ she said. ‘He used to read a dictionary for company.’
Adam laughed.
‘I don’t think that’s funny,’ she said. ‘I think it’s very touching.’
Prattle prattle blather blather, filling in a space. Yes, she’d finished Persuasion and no, she hadn’t really enjoyed it, and had he finished The Man who Loved Children and no, he hadn’t had time. Then she rabbited on some more about her favourite TV crime shows, Sherlock and Fargo, and did he know why crime shows were so appealing? Because they used reason to make sense of a potentially irrational world…blabbering now but she couldn’t stop…giving him a lecture about the powers of deduction, restoring the moral order, Adam saying he didn’t watch much TV and so she made a point of saying she’d rather read crime fiction and how most TV shows were rubbish anyway. More silence, so she geared up again. Had he read a novel called Truth, it was crime fiction, and when it won the Miles Franklin a few years back—did he know about the Miles Franklin, a big award for literature?—and how some people had objected to Truth winning the prize because they thought crime fiction wasn’t serious.
‘Not serious?’ said Adam. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That if it’s enjoyable to read, it can’t be any good.’
She was sounding more inane by the minute.
‘You’re not a reader of fiction, anyway,’ she said.
Did that sound sniffy and superior?
‘I prefer history,’ he said, in a clipped kind of voice.
Was he shutting down the conversation? More accurately, her whacked-out monologue?
He was peering through the window now, muttering something about a change in the weather. Bloody weather. Was that all he could think of to say? She was done with small talk now, possibly forever, looking at all the traffic whizzing past, oblivious to her mood. She was almost relieved when Adam turned into her car park and came to a halt. She reached into her satchel and brought out the toy for Jessie, in a brown paper bag, and handed it to Adam.
‘Sorry about the presentation,’ she said. She saw the question in his eyes. ‘It’s the gnu. For Jessie.’
‘Ah. Yes. That’s very kind of you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, and opened the door.
‘See you next week, then?’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll text you the details.’
‘OK.’
She slipped out of the car, kept her head held high and didn’t once look back.
As she walked towards her flat, flattened by the unromantic state of the ungenerous world, she tried to remember all the good things in her life: her parents and her friends, meals on the table, a roof over her head, books to read and reflect on, physical safety, more-or-less good health. Plus she was smart, if not always up to speed on details.
Trudging up the stairs, Hazel felt some drops of water on her arms. Fat, heavy drops. She looked up to see dismal rain falling from a leaden sky, the world turned grey in an instant. As if her mind had the power to rob the day of colour. As if the day would even care.
Walking backwards
Hazel was having a long, self-pitying kind of bath when she heard the front door open, heard Beth’s voice calling out her name.
‘In the bathroom,’ she called back.
Just me and the water, she thought, with some froth to lift her mood. Mr Bubble for kids, because it was on special at Woolies. She saw Beth’s face at the door.
‘You’re home early, Beth,’ she said. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘I’m feeling a bit queasy. I think it’s the prawns I had for lunch. But—oh, Hazel. You look really glum.’
Because a best friend, even a queasy one, could tell just by looking. A best friend always had great timing.
Beth sat down on the edge of the bath and Hazel told her about her doorknocking day: the ignorance, prejudice, self-interest, stupidity, venality and indifference and…well…OK, there’d been a few highs among all those lows but not much to speak of in the cosmic scheme of things. A few Weak Supports.
Beth asked Hazel to explain.
‘It means people are open to changing their vote. So you pay them another visit, try to talk them round.’
‘Well, that’s a good thing, then. Try to take some heart.’
Beth was sounding like Adam.
Hazel slipped under the water, rose to the surface again.
‘It’s Adam,’ she said. ‘I just can’t work him out. He likes me, I’m sure, and sometimes I think I make him nervous, which is a good sign, isn’t it? And he smiles at me and talks to me like I’m an intelligent human being and…well, that’s it.’
‘Weak support?’ said Beth, and scooped up some bubbles, blew them away. ‘Hazel, look. He’s a lot older than you, right, and he has a young kid. He’s probably
thinking you’re too young. Fancy-free and all that.’
‘But I’m not just after sex.’
‘Maybe he isn’t either. Maybe he wants a woman who’s more his age, ready to settle down. With his kid. A family, you know.’
‘But I like Jessie. Adam’s son.’
Beth looked at her closely. ‘You’ve met him—how many times?’
‘Twice.’
‘And you’d be prepared to take care of him? Be his stepmother, or something?’
Hazel flushed. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’
‘So it’s sex you’re after?’
‘Of course. But, well, not just with anyone. I like Adam so much. He’s the loveliest man I’ve ever met.’
‘Who comes complete with a young child.’ Beth scooped up more bubbles. ‘Try to see it from his point of view, Hazie. If he’s a serious person, like you say he is, he’s not looking for a fling, is he? It wouldn’t make sense.’
Hazel hauled herself out of the bath. ‘Or maybe he doesn’t fancy me,’ she said.
Beth laughed. ‘But just look at your beautiful breasts.’
‘These tiny things. You know I’ve always wanted to be voluptuous.’
‘Like Felicia?’ Beth suddenly looked serious. ‘She told me her breasts give her backache sometimes and how men are always ogling her and it makes her so fed up. Only she called it oogling.’
Hazel reached for a towel. ‘So you’ve been seeing Felicia?’
‘I ran into her in the café—the one where the prick made me an offer I could refuse, remember? She was getting a takeaway soy latte cos she’s lactose intolerant and when she saw me she said she wouldn’t take away her coffee but would drink it in—I love the way she says things kind of wrong and kind of right as well—so we sat down and had a long talk.’
‘About her breasts?’
‘Mostly about our fathers. We bonded over two pricks, ha-ha.’ She stood back to let Hazel past. ‘Oh, and I nearly forgot—a school phoned me to ask about relief teaching. They need someone right away, until the end of the month. Are you interested?’
Hazel was about to say don’t be nuts, over my dead body, until she remembered the increase in their rent. Her father’s birthday in a month: maybe a pair of runners to help him shed some weight. She really needed to have her eyes checked, too, because she was starting to squint at the pages.
The Art of Persuasion Page 13
