by Graham Guy
She waited her opportunity and pulled up a chair next to Georgette in the tea room. “Well, you’ve been here two months, kid. You gonna stay in this dump or move ahead?”
Georgette was a little thrown by the question. “Hi, Jill… er… I… I don’t know. I’ve really only just started.”
“Listen kid, if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life working in a joint like this, then you gotta pick your mark and go down on him.”
Georgette’s eyes popped open. Jill knew she wasn’t tuned in.
“OK, I’ll spell it out for you. Work out where you want to go and work on the guy who will be employing you. I haven’t had three husbands not to know what I’m talking about here. If you want something bad enough in this world, then you gotta remember, you’re gonna have to snitch it from a bloke in the first place. It’ll be a bloke who says you can or can’t have it. It’ll be a bloke who calls the shots. Forget all this glass ceiling crap. It’s a man’s world. Always was. Always will be. It’ll be a bloke who decides how much you’re gonna get paid. It’ll be a bloke who decides if you stay or go. Now the big thing we as women have got going for us is that what they’re often thinking about is what they think with. You ever had a man?”
Georgette dropped her eyes and self-consciously shook her head.
“Yeah, well that’s fine, but you can’t keep it intact forever. But if you want a bit of advice, use it as a bargaining chip. What you’ve got, blokes for the next 30 years are gonna be falling over themselves to get to. You ambitious?”
Georgette’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes,” she gushed.
“Thought so. You want to get married?”
“No way!”
“You like money?”
“Never had any… but yes, money excites me.”
“Then don’t get married. You want to work on big-time television and be a star?”
“Oh god, yes!”
“OK. Then you gotta learn how to use the blokes. As I’ve told you, I’m on my third one, plus a few others in between. I’m telling you, if you want to achieve, you have to ride over the top of the blokes. That means you’re gonna have to be three times as smart as they are to get past ‘em.”
“So what do I do?”
“You reckon you could handle going to bed with a bloke to get a job?”
“Oh, yuk! That’s disgusting. I could never do that.”
“You want to work on big-time TV or don’t you?”
“Of course I do, but not like that.”
“Now, you listen to me. If you want to get there on your own merits, it might take you ten years. Maybe more. That’s crap! So you take the initiative. You get into his pants.”
The suggestion shocked Georgette, but Jill continued, even though she could see she was embarrassing her. “You’ll thank me for this one day, kid. And always remember, when someone looks like you do, every hot-arsed young bastard in town will sniff the breeze and seek you out. So don’t go throwing it about. But you’ve gotta face it sometime. If you seek out the guy at big-time TV, it’ll probably be fucking Ricketts… Jesus, what a sweaty-arsed little creep he is… and you do it with him, never let him come near you again. Get the job. Always be polite, but keep your distance. Once you’ve paid the price, it’s paid in full, first time round. None of this lay-by shit! OK?”
* * *
Georgette rolled over in her king-size bed, smiling at her naïveté, and how she had tried to follow Jill McKenzie’s instructions at the times she needed to. As the wind blew gently through the slits of an open shade in her third-floor apartment, it moved the curtain to obscure her view of the star. She fell asleep, but at 1.50 a.m. the phone at her bedside rang.
“Oh, shit!” she exclaimed, grappling for the receiver, forcing herself to wake up quickly. “H… hello.”
“Hi, you awake?”
“I was sound asleep. Where are you?”
“In town. Will you meet me?”
“Same place?”
“Same place”
“Soon as I can.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“Oh god,” Georgette gushed. “And I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t wear any panties.”
Georgette sprung out of bed. Instinctively, she went to her underwear drawer, smiled, and closed it again. She quickly showered and dried herself. She then took a very expensive ‘Ranier’ she’d bought for such an occasion from her wardrobe and ran a brush through her hair, careful to check her face was free of make-up. She collected her car keys, locked her front door and made for the lift. Moments later, she was on the ground floor, opening the door to her BMW convertible. She pressed another button and the security gate to the car park opened. Soon Georgette McKinley was speeding off into the night.
Fergusson Lane was at the end of an industrial estate on the fringes of the city, deserted, dark and lonely. Georgette felt the pangs of nervousness. Perhaps even a little fear. No street lights. Just a big open and vacant paddock. Even the grass was dead from the fall-out of nearby chimney stacks. Up ahead she caught a glimpse of something shining in the dark.
She flicked her headlights to high beam. As she drew closer, the shining object became familiar, a stretched limousine parked a long way in off the road. Georgette’s palms began to get clammy. Adrenaline raced through her body as she felt her heartbeat quicken. Her dry mouth made it difficult to swallow. She brought her car to a standstill a few metres from the limousine. As she cut the motor, she saw the back door of the vehicle swing open. She climbed from her convertible and walked to the opened door. As she stepped into the back seat, she reached out to take hold of the hand that was held out to greet her.
“Good evening, Prime Minister,” she half-whispered, “you’re up late tonight.”
“Take a hike, John,” Prime Minister John Talbot said to his driver. “And the others too. I need a bit of space here.”
The Prime Minister’s driver and his two federal police bodyguards, used to the late-night meanderings of their boss, did as they were asked and moved a discreet distance away from the limousine.
Georgette McKinley first met Prime Minister John Talbot when she came to interview him two years previously. She could tell he was instantly smitten with her, quick to spot his vulnerability. She knew if she played her cards right, John Talbot would be a wonderful source of information. The best, in fact. But would he respond?
She sent out the signals, indicating she could easily be seduced by the trappings of power. Although Talbot was a man in his fifties, he wasn’t too bad to look at, she told herself.
Within minutes of her returning to the studio, she received the subtle but inquiring phone call. Two hours later, Georgette McKinley was learning just how insatiable Australia’s Prime Minister could be. For the two years that followed, she was always available on his demand. That’s when the big stories began to fall into her lap and she began to make a name for herself. With what she got from John Talbot and what she cultivated corporately, Georgette McKinley was able to keep coming up with the goods. And because her liaisons with John Talbot were strictly top secret, no-one, but no-one, ever suspected. As long as he remained Prime Minister and desired her totally, her information pipeline would continue.
She knew he hated doing it, that he wondered if the cost was becoming too high, but he hated even more the thought of not being able to lay between her legs and that whatever the price, he simply had to have Georgette McKinley. What he didn’t know was that the moment his information dried up, he would discover she had an unlisted phone number
He handed her an envelope. “Read it and burn it. Don’t tear it up. Burn it,” he told her.
“When can I use it?”
“The Leader of the Opposition, Stan Philmont, gets rolled next Wednesday.”
“Bullshit!”
“Sit on it till Tuesday night.” Talbot smiled. “Lead with it. Looks like you get another fifteen minutes of fame, eh?”
“Oh, John, thank you.”
�
��Don’t thank me… show me.”
Georgette took hold of his hand and pushed it between her legs.
Talbot groaned in a total outpouring of lust, which became all-consuming. “Oh, good girl, you remembered.”
.
Chapter 7
Bill Murphy leaned across the kitchen table, picked up a box of matches and lit a solitary candle he’d pushed into a chocolate-coated donut. He watched the flickering flame for a few moments, the melting wax, then sang ‘happy birthday’ to himself. Still focussed on the flame, his thoughts went back over his other birthdays. Then with a quick puff, he blew it out. He wondered if anyone else would remember the anniversary of his birth. He doubted it. His father had been gone for more years than he could recall. Until his forty-fifth year, his mother never missed one. But now, she too had gone. His ex-wife?
Hardly, he thought, haven’t seen or heard of her for fifteen years.
His sister, Constance, had long been estranged so he doubted if there would even be a card. He smiled philosophically to himself.
Not a living soul knows that today I turned 52.
He took a cigarette from his soft Camel pack, lit it and drew back heavily. He looked at his surroundings and conceded, Yes, some people may be of the opinion I live as a bit of a recluse.
Yet it was no mistake that he lived in rural isolation. For many years he’d planned to slip quietly away, but it was only the best-selling success of his third novel, The Fires of Midnight, that allowed him to do so.
Bill Murphy had spent his life in the electronic media, swapping between radio and television, all with the dream of writing a best-seller and living on a clifftop overlooking the sea. Thirty-seven publishers rejected his first work. Forty-two said no to his second, so he concentrated his efforts within the boundaries of the media and cast aside any thoughts of topping the best-seller list. Then, out of the blue, he received a call from a publisher. One who had previously rejected his work. He was encouraged to try again; so two years later, Bill Murphy sent off 645 pages to the London headquarters of Lysaught Publishers.
Three days after his fiftieth birthday, Lysaughts phoned to say that The Fires of Midnight was on its third print run and a sizeable cheque was in the mail. To celebrate, Bill Murphy phoned London back, received a projection on sales, then walked into the showroom of the local car dealer. A short time later he drove a brand new Holden Commodore utility to a trailer yard, wrote out a cheque for a new ten by six and made his way back to his rented flat. He phoned his land agent, then various media outlets where he’d been freelancing a living, packed his trailer, closed the door, put the key in the letterbox and drove north out of Sydney.
He wasn’t a great hoarder of personal effects. Until his forty-fifth birthday, he’d kept everything. Boxes of newspaper clippings, taped interviews, copies of stories he’d written, plus a heap of memorabilia. After his mother’s funeral, and left with the task of cleaning out and selling her unit, he thought he’d have a ‘spring clean’ himself. So practically everything went. He had even found some old love letters from a teenage romance. He didn’t toss them into the rubbish bins with everything else. Instead, he went to the furthest point on the cliff face overlooking the Sydney Heads. When the wind changed and blew out to sea, he ceremoniously tore them up and watched the remnants of a long-lost love disappear into the whitecaps way below.
His ruthless attitude that ‘everything goes’ meant that what he had left packed easily into his newly acquired trailer. As he drove through the toll gates out from Hornsby onto the Gosford freeway, he still wasn’t sure of his exact destination.
He felt it may be up towards Newcastle. Maybe even further. He saw a vacancy sign for overnight cabins at a caravan park on the outskirts of Newcastle, pulled in off the freeway and paid for three nights.
So where the hell am I going to live? he asked himself, settling back into a cabin chair and dragging on a Camel. He knew he wanted to slip quietly into obscurity, but not so far that he left civilisation a three-day drive away. He knew the north coast reasonably well, having travelled it many times over the years, stopping off at various beachside resorts.
As he casually flicked through a road atlas, South West Rocks leapt out at him. He wondered why. As he cast his memory back three decdes, he remembered seeing the place as a young man in the services. It was only an overnight stay and hardly conducive to a holiday, but its beauty, tranquillity and picturesque surroundings had stayed with him, forming an indelible impression in his subconscious mind. Then suddenly, after all these years… back it came. He rose to his feet, stubbed out his cigarette and smiled.
“Looks like it’s going to be South West Rocks,” he said out loud, almost as though that was the plan all along. The little coastal resort with a population of only a few thousand was about another three hours drive north of Newcastle. “Yeah, bugger it, that’ll do. Wonder if I can find a place off the beaten track a bit?”
On the morning of the fourth day, Bill Murphy was loading his trailer and had momentarily left the driver’s door to his new utility open. When he returned to the vehicle after locking up the cabin, there was a little black-and-white kelpie dog sitting in the driver’s seat. Barely off its mother, the little puppy was sitting on its haunches, its ears pricked and focusing its big bright eyes right at him.
“Well, look at you!” Bill Murphy smiled. He leaned in and picked up the small animal, imediately taken with it. He tipped it over and took a quick peek. “A little boy, eh! So who do you belong to?”
Bill scanned the area. There was no-one about. Being mid-week and off-season, the place was nearly deserted. He put the little kelpie back on the front seat of the utility, closed the door and walked over to the kiosk.
“Anyone missing a dog?” he asked the attendant.
“Nope! No-one’s said anything to me,” came a casual and uninterested reply.
Bill smiled inwardly. The answer pleased him because for some reason which he couldn’t even explain to himself, he liked the idea of keeping the little animal. He returned to the vehicle and, as he opened the door, the puppy was standing on the passenger side seat, wagging its tail. He leaned against the vehicle and lit a smoke. He was in two minds as to what to do. The puppy was obviously well bred. It was also very obviously someone’s pet. He thought if he waited a while he’d see someone frantically searching for him. But no-one came.
He checked his watch. “Christ, I can’t stay here all day!”
Finally he climbed in behind the wheel. “Righto buggerlugs, it looks like it’s just you and me,” he said glancing over at his newly acquired passenger. “You want to come and live at South West Rocks? because that’s where we’re going.”
Bill Murphy started the engine and drove out onto the highway. He checked his mirror a few times. Maybe someone would be coming after him, realizing they’d lost their dog. But no-one did.
“So what are we going to call you? You sure as hell looked to me to be a lost and lonely little bugger,” he said, giving him a quick glance as he drove on up the road. He tossed around a few names, but none seemed to fit. Bill looked again at the puppy. Then it hit him. Lonely seemed to be the word that stuck. “That’s it,” he told the pup. “I’ll call you Lonely.”
* * *
After a couple of hours, South West Rocks loomed ahead.
He drove around the place for a while then took a cabin for a week at a local caravan park. The next morning, with Lonely resting on one arm, Bill Murphy decided to try and find his little piece of paradise. He saw a sign: Real Estate Agent. He parked the utility and walked in.
“Is a dog allowed in here?” he called, as he stepped inside the door.
The woman behind the desk looked up. “Where is he?”
Bill Murphy pointed to a solitary head poking out of his jacket pocket. Instantly, the personality of the woman was transformed. She immediately left her desk to walk over to Bill.
“Oh, look at him! Isn’t he gorgeous?” She looked up at Bill. “What
’s his name?”
“Lonely.”
The woman laughed lightly. “I suppose it would be in a pocket that big. How can I help you?”
Bill Murphy explained what he was looking for and was introduced to a salesman.
“It doesn’t have to be flash,” he told him, “just as long as it sits up high, overlooks the sea, and it’s in reasonable condition. It’ll be cash and I’ll pay by cheque. If you’ve got a problem with that, tell me now, and I’ll go elsewhere.” The real estate agent gave a hand gesture indicating there wouldn’t be.
For two days, the agent drove Bill Murphy around properties that were for sale in the coastal inlet. In one and out the other. For some reason he was unable to conceive just what it was his client had in mind. Finally, close to despair, the land agent threw caution to the wind.
“There is one other place,” he told his prospective client.
“It’s been empty for a while. Probably going on three months. I don’t have any details, I just know it’s there. Long way in off the road… about fifteen minutes south. Backs onto the Hat Head National Park. Only bit of private land left in the area. You want me to grab a key?”
Bill Murphy didn’t appear all too enthusiastic. “Why not?” he shrugged.
A short time later, the land agent swung in off the highway a few kilometres from South West Rocks and wound his way in towards the coastline. Ahead, sitting on a small clifftop, the house came into view. White, solid stone walls, tin roof, four old sheds in the immediate surrounds and a garage attached to the house from the eastern side. The complex was semi-circled by bushland, which Bill Murphy assumed was the national park.
The two men got out of the car, and Bill casually sidled away on his own. At the rear of the house were several Sweet William border plants and Glossy Abelia evergreen shrubs. Draped from a wire trellis, their green leaves mottled with yellow, were two Brazilian Bellflowers. A Heath Banksia and several Peegee Hydrangeas stood out from a vast array of shrubs and ground cover. He also noticed a couple of shrubby evergreens known for their fragrant blooms, Heliotropium arborescens. Bill preferred to call them by their more common name, Cherry Pies.
