by Jock Serong
‘You know she’ll flirt,’ says Alan.
‘Okay.’
‘You’ll flirt back, right? And cry. The minute she gives you an opening, fucking go for it. You understand? You’re not live. They can cut it while you recover. Snot, makeup everywhere, I don’t care. Just get the fucking waterworks going, okay?’
I nod, causing the makeup brush to stray onto my hair. The technician sighs irritably.
‘That’s my boy,’ he says, clapping me on the back as he leaves. I call out after him as he retreats into the gloom.
‘I’m not your fucking boy.’
But right now, I most certainly am.
Elizabeth Brookes is there in the small studio when I enter. Power suit, cloud of hairspray as she reads her notes. She’s elegant and sternly beautiful.
She flicks the hair-sprayer away and stands to shake my hand, a heavy gold fob swinging on her wrist.
‘Darren! Thanks so much for coming on.’ Her voice is confident and unexpectedly deep. ‘You wouldn’t believe the level of interest in this.’
She looks to the heavens like I’m manna from them.
‘It’s a pleasure,’ I reply, then lower my voice to a conspirator’s whisper. ‘You know we specifically asked for you.’
She looks at me sidelong with a painted nail hanging in the air, eyes narrowed. Then she throws back the head and horse-laughs. ‘You’re a charmer, just like they said! Let’s get down to it, hey?’
She resumes her seat and the crew closes in around us, silently raising and lowering the cameras. There’s a soft lamp beside us and a small table between our knees with two glasses of water. The lamp is purely for effect—there’s lighting rigged everywhere. Someone calls action and her pupils dart. I realise there’s a teleprompter behind me, but none behind her. In the darkened depths of the room, Alan’s propped against a door jamb, watching.
‘Darren Keefe, thank you for joining us.’
I focus on the two words Alan has hammered: grave and subdued.
‘It’s a pleasure, Elizabeth.’
‘I want to start way back, Darren, and ask you: what were the first indications that you had a special talent for the game of cricket?’
She smiles generously. I’m safe here.
‘Well I’m not sure that I did have, Elizabeth. But if you play enough backyard cricket against the future captain of Australia, some of it probably rubs off.’
She laughs. ‘Well, you say that, but the numbers suggest otherwise—sixteen thousand first class runs, thirty-two centuries, the fastest fifty in domestic history…these are amazing statistics.’
‘I faced some awful bowling, you know.’
The laugh again. ‘You once hit—I’m reading here—you hit an English county bowler onto the roof of the Glamorgan Members’ Stand. No one’s ever hit a ball that far in the history of cricket. I mean, how? What’s the magic?’
Oh, you dreadful sycophant.
‘That was 1992 or ’93, I think. It was downwind, okay? People have exaggerated that over the years.’ No they haven’t. I hit the fucking cover off the thing. ‘It was a bit lucky. You put it up there and sometimes it sort of lodges in a jetstream and…’ I make a rocket motion with one hand, ‘it just keeps going.’
She lowers her brow ever so slightly. ‘But it hasn’t always been good times.’
‘No, certainly.’
‘Let’s go back to March 1996 at the MCG. The Shield final against Queensland and you were in the form of your life.’
I nod and smile ruefully.
‘West Indian fast bowler Federal Collins was playing for Queensland, and you—’
‘We had an altercation.’
‘Quite a big one as it turned out. Tell us what happened to your hand.’
‘Well, Fed crushed my thumb.’ I hold the wonky digit up in front of my face and regard it sorrowfully. ‘It’s not clear whether the ball hit the end and drove the bone here down through its socket, or whether it just got crushed against the bat handle. End result was the same. It didn’t mend well after the surgery, and I can’t fully bend it.’
I give it a wiggle to illustrate the problem.
‘What effect did that have on your career?’
I shrug helplessly. ‘There’s no feeling in the thumb—it never came back. As I say, I can’t form a complete grip, and that fine motor control, well, it’s everything. So my days were numbered. I struggled on for a while, but it was basically all over from then on, so, yeah.’
I look straight down the barrel of the camera with a larrikin grin: ‘So, kids, don’t ever modify your batting gloves like I did, okay?’
‘And don’t taunt fast bowlers,’ chimes in the lovely Elizabeth.
‘Absolutely, don’t do that either.’
We both have a gentle laugh as the exchange fades.
‘Times were tough after your retirement?’
‘Yes they were. Looking back on it, there wasn’t the support that athletes get these days. The money stops coming in, and you’re released from all those disciplines you’re accustomed to. And you know, people have been saying yes to you all your life, and then the music stops.’
‘You seem to have taken refuge in the arms of some very glamorous women.’
She’s arched one eyebrow.
‘One or two. We’re not naming names, are we?’
Laughter.
‘There were drugs?’
I let all the levity wash off me, as visibly as I can.
‘And booze, yes. It’s a, it’s a hard thing to describe if you’re not wired this way, but…I just…needed more and more of everything. Excess. I just wanted excess.’
‘There was the tragic disappearance of your niece, Hannah Keefe.’
I suck in a sharp breath and look down. She watches me for a few moments.
‘What do you believe happened to her?’
‘I just know that we lost the most beautiful child, someone who was…innocent. Completely innocent. Beyond that, I don’t know anything. It’s baffling and it still hurts.’
She’s found a segue in that. ‘So let’s move to another innocent girl. The night when it all came crashing down.’
I need to relax. This is why we’re here, after all.
‘Emily Weil was nineteen when she died of an overdose after a night of partying with you. What on earth went wrong?’
She’s put it open-ended, nice and fair. No kind of ambush, this.
‘I was at a nightclub. I met her there, her and her friend Keely, and we danced a bit and at some stage we wound up with these drugs, this pentobarbital in little glass vials, and that’s—I know it sounds unlikely but that’s all I remember.’
And I don’t know if it’s the lights or the knowledge that I’m being laid bare, or the invitation in her voice to do it, but without warning I’m sobbing. I’m just plunged into a slobbery fit of weeping, head bowed and face in hands. I know they’ve left the camera running because this is what the punters want to see, but here and now, in the boot that is my deathbed, I promise you the tears were real.
After the storm subsides, I squeeze out my eyes and mumble an apology. Deep breaths.
‘I failed that girl terribly. I mean, I’d only known her a couple of hours, but I had a…a responsibility to them both. Christ, I’d been so indulged for so long that I’d lost sight of consequence, you know? Someone else always took care of everything. I can’t imagine the sorrow I’ve caused, can’t fathom it. It’s a stain on my soul that I can never be rid of. I’m so sorry. I’m…’
The blubbering starts again and this time they cut after a minute of it.
‘Terrific Darren,’ coos Elizabeth. ‘This shit is gold.’
But I can’t stop, and now she seems surprised by the notion that the grief might be real.
‘Have some water?’ she asks meekly.
The rest of the interview is more straightforward—what the future holds, what I think of my brother’s career, more flirting. The tears are forgotten, and along with them, E
mily Weil. I can feel Elizabeth winding up to a conclusion, when she asks me a surprising question.
‘So Darren, your agent has negotiated a hefty fee on your behalf for this interview. What are you going to do with that money?’
‘He has?’ I blurt. Then I look out into the darkness to see Big Al frantically nodding. ‘Yes, he has. We did that so we could donate every cent to the Weil Family Foundation. And I urge any family who’s been touched by the scourge of drugs to do the same.’
‘Darren Keefe, it’s been a pleasure.’
‘Thanks Elizabeth.’
They cut the cameras and Elizabeth lets out a whoop of joy.
‘We fucking smashed that!’ she screams. And before the words are out of her mouth, Al’s lumbering in, those porcine eyes wide with fury. ‘What the fuck were you thinking? You reckon I work for free? You miserable, self-indulgent cunt…’ He’s grabbing at me, flapping, tripping on cables, losing his shit. I peel the little mike off my lapel and throw the cord at him. His abuse fades to background noise as I slip into the fire escape and down into the street.
It gets easier from there, just as Craig predicted.
The network picks me up, first in a handful of guest reporter slots on Boarding Pass, the travel show for the cashed-up and unimaginative. All I have to do is lie on banana lounges and grin while I read a script. Now and then I liven proceedings with a spot of paragliding or heli-skiing. The contract is for an annual salary, so occasionally I roll up for an MC gig, or maybe a Christmas special, but none of it’s too onerous.
They send me to a warehouse in Thomastown to pick out some suits. So far in life, I’m a guy who’s only worn suits to court. Nothing looks more pitiful than an athlete in a borrowed suit. But these ones are magnificent, even to my untutored eye. The company people walk in small circles around me, dropping pins in the hems and peering intently at the seams. They smooth their hands downwards over the lapels, hitch with thumb and forefinger at the waistbands of the trousers until they’re completely sure everything hangs as it should.
When they feel the climate is right, the network brings me back into cricket, this time as part of a well-informed expert panel, talking about the game before and after it’s happened. I’ve got the suits. I’ve got the teeth, and they spend ages on the hair, which is getting just a little blonder. I’ve discovered spray-tanning: a light golden glow for those times that I’m doing public things but I’m not in TV makeup. Trust me, you can hardly tell.
The highlights are sliced up and fed into blog posts and other smallgoods. When controversies arise—a drug bust, a late-night-car-crash-and-fail-to-report, I write in a major daily. Vague homilies about personal responsibility, calculated to provoke outrage because outrage sells. How dare he lecture anyone, etc. Then back to the cocktail bar.
I get some more fantastic suits out of it. Just a little glossier than the previous ones. The sheen works well under the lights. I get free flights, hotel rooms. The money isn’t a fortune, but when you’re not paying for much else it’s certainly enough.
Wally calls a press conference one dull April day and announces he’s retiring from Test cricket, effective immediately.
It’s been coming, of course. His movements have lost their feline fluidity, and his air of serene permanence at the crease has been replaced by something more like stubbornness. There’s constant injury speculation, to which I mischievously contribute now and then. He’s had dodgy hamstrings since we were kids.
Sitting there in a Cricket Australia polo shirt encrusted with logos, he reads from a statement. His head is down over the microphones, his brow tense with strain. I know that look, though you don’t see it often. His voice, his worried face, carry into millions of Australian homes and cars, into sheds and kitchens and print media and syndication globally. Over the smell of the evening meal browning on the stove, Australians will learn that their monarch has abdicated. The Governor-General could take a walk and it would be lesser news. Adults will feel their own mortality just a little; kids will mourn. He must choose his words carefully.
‘It has been the greatest honour of my life to captain my country. So many kids dream of the opportunities that I’ve had, and I am well aware of how lucky I have been. I have had wonderful support from the game’s administrators, from my family and from my team-mates. But I must be conscious at all times of what is best for Australian cricket, and I now believe it’s best that someone else steps up and takes the national side forward. My passion for the game is undimmed, but time stands still for no man. And I need to consider the welfare of my family, who have made sacrifices for me to occupy this role. It is a matter of public record that the captaincy of Australia has exacted a terrible price from me and from my wife Louise…’
His voice cracks, just enough, just enough.
‘From here on, I wish to focus on the various charities I am now involved with, and yes, I can confirm that I will bore you all with a book about myself, just as my predecessors have done.’
There’s a ripple of polite laughter at this. He answers a few questions in brief and clinical terms, then climbs to his feet, scooping the papers as he goes. Shouted questions erupt as the pack clamours for just that little bit more.
But he’s gone.
The board arrange a testimonial dinner at the Ambassador in Sydney and the network quickly closes a deal to have me compere it. In media terms, this is a dream combination. The graceful retiring captain, feted by his incorrigible kid brother in front of a room of five hundred and a live television audience. Are the rumours of disharmony true? Could Darren Keefe say something wildly inappropriate on the night?
The board wouldn’t have dreamed of having me near a thing like this only a few short years ago. But such is the effectiveness of my redemption tale, not to mention the magnitude of the rights deal struck by the network, that they’re powerless to intervene.
I get a few shots beforehand: over the eyebrows, under them, and a few around the corners of my mouth. Within hours, the poison has pulled my face back into an approximation of what it looked like at twenty. Like a chord with one bung note in it: you can just hear it but you can’t quite identify it. Still, it’s better than looking my age.
On the night I manage to silence the room by talking of the awe in which I held him as a child, the dreamlike state we both emerged from, the jousting and punching and the heckling and the endless repetition of the same series of physical acts to tune them to perfection. I tell them that seeing this as a grudge, seeing it as disharmony, is to fail to understand how brothers operate. I tell them it took two of us for one of us to emerge fully formed in the world. A sacrificial anode, drawing the corrosion away from finer machinery. A second vehicle, pilfered for parts. I tell them I understand my place in the world as that lesser being and that it doesn’t trouble me, but in fact fills me with pride.
I tell them about the day of his asthma attack and how it felt. I am standing at a podium in this vast stage and when I look down I am looking at a few sheets of white paper, blinding in the technical light. When I look up I see a dimmer glow, a sand-scattered ocean floor, those faces in their hundreds. And no one is speaking. I have them, I have all of them for this moment. The eyes look back at me as I remember him going white, going silent. This is a thing you didn’t know about your captain, a thing he carefully hid from all of you.
He’s at the front table, looking up at me in his tuxedo. Composed, dignified, still. Somewhere between man and middle-aged man. His mouth is a fixed line of authority and calm. A mouth I punched many times, a mouth I watched that time, gaping for air, reaching for life. I can’t tell from up here whether he desperately wants me to shut up, or whether he’s comfortable with me trawling through such things. Louise is beside him in a scarlet gown that lends itself to the occasion. She’s reaching over his shoulder towards a waiter—not listening, I’m sure—pointing delicately to her glass. A flash of jewellery. Her hair. A refill.
I free them from the silence with some laughter.
This is a man, after all, who once rang me from Karachi in the middle of the night to complain to me that a regional newspaper in Quetta had got his batting average wrong (by zero point oh three), and needed to be reminded that there was a military coup going on. A man so impervious to sledging that it was often left to me to tell close-in fielders to shut up, even when it was him at the striker’s end. A man so particular about his health that he used to carry around a tiny square of paper with his blood type, asthmatic status and a history of all known illnesses written in minute script. Once, when he had it out to show someone, I whipped it from the palm of his hand and ate it.
When I’m finished I call for him to come to the stage and I watch him walking towards me, strong and centred. He smiles generously as he reaches me and shakes my hand, and says something in my ear, quite loudly, which I can’t hear at all over the applause that’s covering my exit, his entrance. I nod enthusiastically and do a little point and laugh thing. Our eyes are dancing frantically, trying to find each other as our bodies pass. Are you in there? his eyes are asking, and so are mine.
We never connect.
I flow on down the vast steps from the stage and take my seat at the front table next to Louise. There’s handshakes and laughter at the table, and she puts an affectionate hand on my thigh as she congratulates me. I can see their ring on her finger, aglow in the half-dark. Her hand is shaking slightly. She smells of chardonnay.
Wally’s reached the podium, waited for the applause to subside and thanked me. There’s kind words about my free spirit, my example of living for the moment, my capacity for fun. All of these things, I know and the room knows, are euphemisms for my inability to keep a lid on it. He swiftly moves on to wider themes. And as I listen to his summation of an entire career, I sense no pathology, no wear and tear. There’s Hannah, of course. But if Hannah was going to break him, he would be broken by now. For someone with such obvious resilience—a facet in which the public can see what I see—the passage of time would ease the pain, not compound it.
