by Paul Daley
So I swallowed my annoyance and my hurt, decided not to have a showdown with the boy—you know, gently does it.
I said, Mate, you’re part of a team—you know you’ve got to go. And anyway, explain geocaching.
Okay, where’s your phone? he asked.
Over there—on the kitchen bench.
He took my phone, tapped at the screen, said, Here, I’m downloading the app—you’ll see why it’s so much fun.
Yeah, right, mate, but what is it?
The twins, still hanging onto me, looked at one another, and said in stereo, We want breakfaaaaast.
Righto, I said, daddyo’s famous scrambled eggs coming right up.
I searched around the kitchen for the Scanpan, not knowing where anything was anymore, all the while thinking about Sam and footy. I was melting butter, looking for the eggs and thinking, What does he mean he doesn’t want to play? How can a kid of mine not want to play football? Sam was born to play. Even more than me. He’s not quite as good yet as I was at his age. But it’s just a matter of time. That’s because he’s only ever played for the school team, mostly a bunch of typical private-school sheilas, nothing like cutting your teeth with the Heidelberg West Magpies. But eventually the scouts will spot him, I can pull a string or two to make sure, and he’ll get into the club under the father–son rule. Another champion Slattery.
I gave it one more go, said, Mate, footy—c’mon, seriously? Why not?
Sam looked at me and said with a straight face, Because You Only Live Once, Dad, just because YOLO.
YOLO. I wanted to deck the smart-arse little prick. But I’ve never struck my kids. Ever. And I wasn’t about to start.
Whenever I come home the kids, especially Sam, test the old disciplinary boundaries. Ana says it’s actually easier for her to manage them when I’m away, reckons I come home and upset the applecart, throw out the routine, raise their expectations and change their patterns. Then I’m gone again.
Well thanks, darl, I’m sorry. It’s hard not to take the message: stay away—it’s easier without you.
Still, I thought, this weekend I’m around and looking forward to a few hours at home before Sam’s footy at the old school where they’ll be all over me, then maybe a quick sanger at home and off to the box at the G for the match and rooms afterwards with Sam if the boys win to sing the old club song. Season’s been bloody good. Not a loss yet. It could be the big year.
I’d even promised to cook that night—not fancy shit like on the TV shows. But something simple—lamb korma, maybe. Ana and I would watch something on the telly with a bottle of nice red. Who knew? Maybe she’d be up for a roll on the old workbench after all? It was all before me on Saturday morning.
Out of habit more than anything I flicked on the wireless. Saturday AM had just started.
I missed the introduction to the story but picked it up with Drysdale saying something like, Of course I condemn the violence. Australian people should not take the law into their own hands against those they suspect might have links to the perpetrators. But people are worried about their safety. I’d just say to Australians that while I can confirm that there has been a domestic terrorist threat from an isolated group of Normalian Muslims, the Australian people should not make the mistake of thinking either all Muslims or all Normalians are …
It’s an old trick that one—old as politics itself: heavily imply guilt by association upon a religious or ethnic group but tell people they shouldn’t infer that very same thing. The gallery always calls it a dog whistle. But the point is that people can’t hear a dog whistle—it’s inaudible to humans. This is loud and clear megaphone politics.
Drysdale was blithely elevating whatever spurious intelligence they might have had into a terrorist threat, just as Eddie had warned me when we’d first met—there’ll be a crisis that’ll slam dunk you, and if there isn’t Drysdale will fabricate one.
The wet-behind-the-ears kid reporter failed to ask Drysdale the obvious question—What specific threat?—so Drysdale had no option but to go for the rhetorical free kick: So, some people may ask what threat am I talking about? Well, while I can’t go into the details, Simone, I’d just say that the Australian Government is in receipt of highly credible intelligence that a group of Normalian-Australian citizens is planning a terrorist operation on the Australian mainland.
What a steaming pile.
A few minutes later Errol texted me. Sam was still mucking around with my phone, playing with the geocache app, so when Errol’s text pinged, Sam looked at me sideways—here we go, then, weekend ruined—and read from the phone.
Dad, get this message from the Flynnster: Gallery needs comment re terror threat. Say terrible—support govt?
Fuck it, butter’s burning in the pan. The kids watched as I clicked the thumb and middle finger of my right hand faster and faster, repeatedly, nervously, and said to myself, Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.
Then Eddie called. I said, Hang on, darl, then to Sam, Hey, mate, cook some eggs for your sisters, would you?
Then back to Eddie, This is horseshit, Eddie, and remind Errol I’m the fuckin’ Opposition leader, not him—yet. Tell him to tell the gallery they’ll have to wait for my considered response. Eddie, we support nothing till we know what’s actually happening here—am I right?
After the call I dropped bread into the toaster. Gemma said, Dad, stop swearing all the time. Calm down.
The phone rang again, a B-team journo on an early Saturday shift. Errol had been too literal and texted out a quick line to the gallery saying, We support nothing till we know what’s actually happening here.
I said, real polite, Mate—maaate—I’ll have to call you back. Straight away it rang again and it was another journo with the same question: Why don’t you believe the PM when he says there is credible intelligence that the Normalians might be planning a terror attack?
Ana walked out of the bedroom into this. She tied up her dressing gown, scowled daggers at me while I was still on the phone, at Sam cooking the twins’ breakfast, at the burning toast, at the whole scene. All she’d wanted was sleep. Just this once. Is that really too much to ask for? I looked at her and shrugged.
I put down the phone, moved to embrace her. She turned, walked away and I began to follow, said, Ana, honey, then the phone rang again.
Sam, I asked, get the blower for me would you, mate, while I followed Ana down the hall, desperately wanting to make it right.
So I was saying stuff like, Ana, I can’t help it, baby, you know it never stops, we knew that when we decided to do all of this, remember? And then Sam was right behind me holding up the phone and saying, Dad it’s the prime minister, so I took it and I said, Morning, Prime Minister.
Ana shook her head, went into the bedroom and shut the door hard.
And I was left with Drysdale telling me there’ll be an ASIO briefing for me at one o’clock in Canberra. It’s the bloody Normalians, Danny, he said, a cell planning an attack in one of the cities. On top of the bomber killing our troops in Afghanistan we’ve already got reprisal attacks out west—can’t blame the punters for that Danny. I need you on board with us for this.
Yes, Prime Minister, I said, I heard.
Well, Danny, he said, this is no time to play politics on such an important issue, that’s why I want you briefed from the very top. And incidentally, Danny, I’ve taken the liberty of telling our friends in the media that the government has offered to inform you, at the very highest level, about the threat to the nation.
Thank you, Prime Minister—I heard that on radio as well, I said a little too quickly, knowing that I’d just been rogered up the jacksie by an expert.
Cunt. Bye-bye weekend.
I went into the bedroom. Ana was on the bed, sobbing.
Babe, I said, babe I’ll be back by tonight. Promise.
She said, Don’t bother, Danny, don’t bother. You’re going back up to Canberra for parliament tomorrow anyway. Stay on. Do your work. Become prime minister.
I fear from the way she was—distant, officious, cold—that she suspected. She knows how it unsettles me, just how much it hurts when she withdraws all warmth, all sensibility, like this. It cuts me adrift, makes the isolation and loneliness boil up inside me and then I do stuff I regret. I wanted to do the right thing. But sometimes she makes that hard.
Ana, honey, you’ve gotta understand, I began. But she’d heard it all before.
Well fuck you, Danny—fuck you! There’s got to be a limit to this.
Married life can go on and on behind a façade of civility, but occasionally a valve blows and the anger and resentment spew out like this.
There’s love in there, buried somewhere deep down among all the emotional sludge. But mostly neither of us can find it, in ourselves or in the other.
Once I used to feel her support, her concern and compassion, even sympathy, when I was cutting up rough over politics and over me forever feeling guilty because the job made me a lousy father and a piss-weak absent husband to a woman who deserves so much better. But now it’s all just cold and contractual, efficient and clinical.
There’s still affection from the kids, but not from Ana. When it stopped, I started with other women. Then, of course, home became hostile, foreign ground. But, until anything to the contrary is said, Ana remains an equal partner in The Project.
I know she isn’t willing to surrender what was—what still could be, with a little repair work—a good marriage in order not to become the PM’s wife. She’ll wear all the difficulty while there’s still a remote chance. Meanwhile, we both just keep asking God what will happen to us if I lose—an ever-increasing probability.
Ana, honey, I said, I’ll be home tonight. I love you.
She sat bolt upright on the bed, full of fury, her beautiful ocean-green eyes stained with tears and contempt, and spat at me, Don’t be ridiculous, Danny, the only person you’re capable of loving is yourself.
I wanted to punch the wall, and I said, Jesus, Ana, do you always have to be so fucking hard?
And then I left.
13
I watched the news on the plane. First item: ‘PM Acts to avert new terror threat’. Next, yet another piece on the national obsession that is the final, Tuesday night, of that cooking show. The last news item grabbed me big time: a teenage boy has been bitten after he and a mate found and opened a geocache—a small plastic container holding various treasures and a brown snake—in the bush outside Adelaide. Christ, there’re some sick puppies out there; imagine putting a deadly snake in a container that you knew kids were going to open?
Eddie was waiting outside the airport in a black VW convertible.
A few feathery ochre leaves clung to the skeletons of the poplars that attend the roadside between the military college and the Molonglo River, shimmering silver in the dull light.
We turned onto King’s Avenue and accelerated across the bridge. The heavy mist was still clinging low to the lake and filling the hollows along the banks. The giant metallic spire of the House was punching through the top of the cloud, but only when we drove up the ramp to the building did the immaculate, verdant grass of Capital Hill and the security barriers become visible.
The barriers and bollards of post-9/11 have wrecked the intent of this place that was, consistent with the ideal of the genius Chicagoan Walt Griffin, to enable the people to literally and figuratively walk above their legislators. Griffin originally designed the ‘capitol’—a people’s palace, an archive that would serve as the conscience of and memory for the nation—for up there.
He wanted the very best for the newly federated Australia. But the Luddites couldn’t look beyond their own prosaic Anglophile tastes. And so the conservatives fucked him over, in line with their instinct for mediocrity, and trashed his ambition and his dream. Instead, eighty years later, we got a worthy second prize: a parliament the people could walk over. Then the security freaks imposed the bollards and barricades to deter their imaginary suicide bombers … and the electors were banished from walking over their legislators.
Something inside me still stirs whenever I see the House from across the lake. But these days for me that sight conjures opportunity squandered more than democracy’s great promise, as it once did.
The clack-clack of Eddie’s and my footsteps on the parquetry echoed through the cavernous core of the building. On a Saturday like this, when there are no members and senators, puffed up and suited young staffers carrying themselves like they’re running the world and throwing deadly glances at opponents, journalists, administration and catering staff, the great cavern beneath Capital Hill feels, with the milky winter light streaming in and the warble of magpies outside, incongruously serene compared with the sitting days which are defined by distilled aggression. I swear that on some sitting days you can actually smell the testosterone; think men’s locker room, roast lamb dinner, burnt coffee and Old Spice.
So we wandered into the foyer of the prime minister’s office. The guard showed us into the inner sanctum. There was Drysdale and the head of ASIO, Nick Merchant, plopped in the cold formal burgundy Chesterfields, silver tea service for two. Fuck you, I thought, aren’t you even going to offer me a cup of tea?
Merchant, sixtyish, ruddy under improbably thick silver hair (rug?) and melting at the edges from a lifetime of Singapore Slings and diplomatic dining, was wearing white chinos, a lime Lacoste polo shirt, leather loafers—no socks—looking ready for the bar at the end of the eighteenth down at Royal Canberra.
He’s another spook with a Hoover complex—a Machiavellian Tory sympathiser who loves the power brought by secret knowledge in a small pond like this. Prick knows more about me than I do: who I lived with and shagged at university; whether I ever had a youthful homosexual dalliance, the answer to which, for the record, is most definitely not; my trip to Cuba in 1981 courtesy of the International Labour Organisation. Probably even knows about Ulrika from East Berlin, a Ukrainian member of the Soviet Communist Party, who I met there, in a manner of speaking. She was unforgettable. First girl I thought about marrying.
Come to think of it, I better tell Eddie about Ulrika at some point. But this definitely wasn’t the day.
Merchant surveyed me like I was a shit smear on his loafer. I wanted to smack him in the mouth. Instead, I just held the line of sight with his piggy black eyes. He knew he was fucked if I win: I’d sack the cunt Sunday morning post-election before the victory headlines were dry.
There was no small talk. Suited me. Drysdale said, Tin tacks.
I leaned forward in the arse-numbing leather bucket chair, said, Great, Prime Minister, because personally I don’t believe any of this nonsense.
I was still looking straight at Merchant and noticed a little tic, perhaps the body’s way of involuntarily conceding a lie, at the corner of his mouth. Or perhaps it indicated a palsy—of early onset MS. No. I really don’t like this guy.
Merchant said, Danny, we are in receipt of highly credible intelligence that a group of Normalian-Australians is planning a terrorist operation on the Australian mainland.
I interrupted: Really? Nick, I already know that because I heard it on the radio. Ruined my whole day. Was going to take my kid to footy, watch him play—he’s a bit of a chip off the old block, you know—give the wife a sleep-in. So tell me something new and then tell me why you expect me to believe you.
Merchant, indignant, said, Danny, I really do resent the implication that the agency would make up something like this.
Who’s saying you made it up? I asked, and switched my gaze to Drysdale. I just want to know why I should believe this when you’ve told me nothing I didn’t already hear on radio. I mean are we talking an attack on a military installation or a public building? Are you basing this on … ?
Intercepts, Merchant volunteered, intercepts—but obviously I can’t tell you any more. They spell out a potential and very real threat—but it’s not specific. As you’d expect, we’ve had our people in the mosques and it’s no secret what some of t
he imams have been preaching.
The hell, Nick, I said, what about what some of the PM’s Christian colleagues are preaching, you know, kill the poofters, burn the Muslim infidel?
Merchant replied, Oh please, Danny, this is intemperate. We have a real threat here …
I looked at Eddie and stood up, extended my hand to Drysdale, shook, said, Not specific! Not damned well specific. But specific enough to rope me into some ridiculous bipartisan scare campaign. Thanks, Prime Minister. But I’m honestly none the wiser.
The PM said, Danny, there’s more. Next week I’m going to reintroduce the Bill—you know the one?—enabling the security services to arrest and hold anyone on suspicion of terrorism for up to a month without charge. During that time it will be up to the discretion of a panel—including the attorney-general, myself, the Opposition leader, Defence Force chief and the heads of ASIO, ASIS, the Australian Federal Police and a representative of the state and territory police services, to determine if the detention period should be extended and if the suspect should be, um, legally represented.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit or laugh.
So I asked Drysdale if he was really serious. You want me to be part of some fucking war cabinet to arrest Normalians without charge and deny them legal representation on the basis of vague intelligence regarding a non-specific threat? Of all the cynical bullshit, Les, Prime Minister—I can’t believe you’re serious about this, mate. You really think I’d sit on some kangaroo court like this?
Yes, it quickly became clear to me that he really did think just that. What’s worse for me, he knew I was totally rooted, that the issue will fracture my party.
Then he smiled, nodded, held out the draft Bill, already printed: Suspicion of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill (2010).
So I shook my head, said I’d let him know. I’d seen the Bill before. We’d knocked it back before these Hooveresque amendments. This was his trigger for a double dissolution.
