by Jessica Rudd
‘So what do you think she should do?’
Don’t ask me.
My gut took over. ‘She needs an image overhaul, she needs the local party to unite behind her and she needs to give newspapers here something good to say about her.’
‘Sounds about right. Why don’t you come up with a strategy and we can talk it through on the phone if you like. I reckon you should stay down there for a few days and work with her team. Take as long as you need.’
Her?
‘Me?’
‘Gotta go. Keep in touch.’
I went back inside just as Joyce arrived with two old-fashioned stainless-steel beakers with frothy heads and curly pink straws. It was grossly unjust that this woman could drink litres of blitzed ice-cream, confected chocolate syrup and full-fat milk and still wind up looking like Rita Hayworth as Gilda.
‘Can I be brutally honest, Melissa?’ I took an enormous swig of aerated sweetness to give me strength.
‘Go ahead.’
‘You’re in danger of losing this election because you’re perfect.’
‘Come again?’
‘I mean look at you. They think you have it all. You’re drop dead gorgeous. You have an incredibly successful career. You drive the sexiest car in Launceston. You’re from a privileged background. People simply don’t feel they can relate to you.’ She took the first few as compliments and the last as a stiletto through the Achilles, but I stuck with it regardless. ‘This isn’t your fault, but it is your problem. The question is: how do we fix it in two weeks so that you can become the next member for Donaldson?’
The remaining droplets of her milkshake looped the loop of her straw. ‘I know what the question is. What’s the bloody answer?’
‘Off the top of my head, I think it goes something like this. Firstly, we need to counter the perception that you didn’t fight for preselection. The party dragged you into this mess; they need to be saying publicly that they approached you to run for Donaldson on your merits.
‘Secondly, we need a national figure who will attest to your intelligence. Someone intellectually weighty and preferably ugly. Maybe a retired judge, an academic or some sort of colleague. You probably have scores of case examples where you have put notorious criminals behind bars.
‘Thirdly, and this will be our Everest, we need to get women behind you. You need to be approachable, not formidable. Dial down the make-up, stick with suits and help at a school canteen somewhere. Host a function for female small-business owners. Go to a nursing home and play cards with old ladies. Let everyone else paint you as bright and successful while you’re busy bringing yourself back down to earth.’
She sighed. ‘You seem an intelligent woman and an attractive one at that, Roo. How can you ask me to change the way I look in order to appeal to other women? It’s so bloody counterproductive to the cause.’
‘Melissa, with respect, they haven’t sent me down here to reform the Tasmanian sisterhood; otherwise, I’d agree with you one hundred per cent. They sent me here because you need to win the hearts and minds of Donaldson and you have two and a half weeks in which to do it. You’re not going to get there by lecturing your own sex on how they should respond to a woman like you. They already despise you, so playing the vampy victim isn’t going to cut it. Take a look at those two in the corner.’ I gestured over my right shoulder to the whispering waitresses. ‘They bitch and they vote.’
She sighed. ‘Where do we start?’
The following Saturday, in a demure navy-blue pant suit and low ponytail, Melissa Hatton was asking people at the Donaldson Secondary College fete whether they wanted their burgers with beetroot or without. Since the start of the week she’d had her face painted as Spider-Man at Tazzie Devils Childcare, joined in at the bingo hall for Ladies’ Day and lent her green fingers to the rose bushes at the RSL. Best of all, she was having a ball, which was evident in the colourful images published in the local press.
After a bit of string-pulling, I’d arranged for party director Mirabelle Halifax to do a television interview in Hobart. She took full responsibility for having to step over the usual processes in order to install candidates at short notice in a number of seats, but pointed out that the Prime Minister had intended to wrong-foot the Opposition by calling such an early election. Designed to coincide with the launch of our dirty games campaign against Brennan, Mirabelle’s message seemed to ease animosity towards Melissa.
Launceston was turning out to be exactly what I needed in order to avoid being mired in self-loathing over the Oscar debacle, not least because I discovered the town was within staggering distance of the Tamar Valley, home to some of the nation’s most delectable drops. With Fran and Clem on board a BA flight to Melbourne and a calm couple of days in the Yarra Valley ahead of me, my life didn’t appear as disintegrated as it had at the beginning of the week.
Melissa and I were now on our way to a lunch interview with local newspaper editor Bob Roberts, or ‘Blobby’, as he was affectionately known. Our mission was clear: expose the other side’s mud-slinging without making Melissa appear precious.
It hadn’t seemed right to have such an important meeting at an ordinary inner-city eatery. So I’d arranged a table à trois at a cellar door restaurant overlooking lines of vines zigzagging their way down to a delightful bend in the Tamar River.
Sadly, Blobby was precisely as I’d imagined him. Rotund with beady eyes framed by the sort of spectacles my gran was partial to. ‘Good to see you, Missy,’ he said, licking fat fingers to force a few recalcitrant strands back into his over-slicked comb-over. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘This is Roo Stanhope.’
I felt blessed when the bread arrived and the licked hand that was poised to shake mine found itself irresistibly pulled towards the butter dish. He stuck his hand into the air, revealing a hydroponic armpit.
The hovering waiter cleared his throat. ‘Ready to order, Mr Roberts?’
‘Yes, and I’d like salted butter, please.’
Melissa tapped her foot under the table as Blobby ordered braised pork belly before snatching the wine list from my hands and choosing something as uninteresting as it was expensive.
‘Our readers seem to have enjoyed your bingo prowess, Missy. The oldies loved your dad, God rest him. How are you feeling about the campaign?’
‘I think we’ve had a great week. People are unhappy with a whole range of things and this is the kind of seat your counterparts around the country will be watching closely, so of course your coverage matters.’ She declined a glass of wine, which was a good decision—I could smell its acidic pomposity a mile off.
‘Are you up the duff or something?’ he roared.
‘No,’ she winked, ‘no time for fun and games when you’re working as hard as I’ve been.’
It was my turn. ‘Tell me, Bob, I’m quite new to this business in Australia, but I’m interested to know from someone as experienced as you whether malicious rumours are part of the usual argy-bargy of Australian political campaigns.’ I brandished a few of the shit-sheets I’d photocopied earlier.
Blobby spat something into a napkin before examining a document entitled DON ’T PUT A RICH BITCH IN DONALDSON .
‘Well,’ he spluttered, dabbing at a droplet of wine on his cuff, ‘I guess these are a bit more personal than one might normally expect.’
‘Melissa’s remarkably thick-skinned about them,’ I said, attempting to swirl some life into the overpriced shiraz, ‘but I just don’t see how this sort of slander has a place in contemporary politics, particularly when Melissa is such an upstanding member of the community. She’s single-handedly responsible for throwing some of Tasmania’s worst criminals behind bars, whereas her opponent…well, I’ve said enough.’
He smiled and used his tongue to dislodge a stray piece of stringy meat from his teeth.
‘Bob knows me, Roo,’ said Melissa, ordering a glass of milk. ‘I’m flawed like the rest of ’em, but what sets me apart from the rest is that I don�
�t bother with the gutter politics, something I had hoped wouldn’t go unacknowledged by the town’s biggest circulating daily.’
‘Come on, Missy,’ croaked Blobby, ‘the fact that you’re not shit-sheeting the other mob isn’t a story, and you’ve got no evidence to show that these come from the other side anyway—they could just as easily be from your own party.’
‘That’s where you’re mistaken, Bob.’ I pulled out an email from a man claiming to have volunteered on the sitting member’s campaign. He’d quit when he was asked if he would use his photocopier to produce thousands of leaflets and tuck them under windscreen wipers in the local supermarket car park. ‘Here’s a source. Call him if you like, or of course I could give it to the National if you’re not interested, but Melissa insisted that we show loyalty to local business.’
‘Of course we’d be happy to give him a bell.’ He wiped his hands on the tablecloth. ‘I hate those windscreen wiper flyers.’ He pulled out a credit card and declared, ‘Lunch is on me.’
He wasn’t wrong. It was all over him.
Too late To Do
Before I lost my job, got pickled on peanut noise, switched hemispheres and joined this travelling circus, my life was a relatively straightforward one. Sure, I was a sexless workaholic hermit, but I had a routine, and when my routine let me down I had coping mechanisms that worked.
One such coping mechanism was the To Do list. Its purpose was clear: to prioritise tasks numerically and execute them in that order. For me, the list usually had three benefits. First, to find clarity in the chaos of an overworked mind. Second, to avoid panic-duplication by committing every outstanding task to paper. Third, to self-reward with a super-satisfying tick for each completed item.
I found myself reflecting on the surprise failure of said coping mechanism as I sat on a lime-green plastic chair in the waiting room of the Immigration office at Melbourne Airport. When Beryl had handed me my employment contract and working visa application form on Day One of the campaign, signing and returning them had been at the top of my list.
Now, on Day Twenty-Two, those two items were lost somewhere in the middle of a paper-clipped, eight-page medley comprising three Post-it notes, the back of what I hoped was just a draft media release headed OPPOSITION ANNOUNCES MEDITATION CENTRE FOR SMEs, a crinkled chewing gum wrapper, two Qantas boarding passes and a tax receipt for three large flat whites.
Certain coping mechanisms, I concluded after some deliberation, are limited in their reach. People who can depend on a To Do list have desk jobs, ergonomic chairs, stationery, fire drills and dress-down Fridays. To Do lists are unsuited to nomadic insomniacs who are so busy they can scarcely find the time to urinate. For them, a To Do list is less about coping and more about escaping.
‘Ah, Miss Stanhope,’ said a long-socked man with a familiar voice. It was Bruce, who had stamped my passport all those weeks ago. Flipping flippantly through a clipboard like a hospital intern on his morning rounds, Bruce was more vertically challenged than I remembered, which is the great advantage of a job behind a counter with an adjustable stool.
Until then, the only man I’d seen in the flesh wearing long socks had also worn a sporran and said ‘och’. Bruce led me into a little room, sat behind a grey laminex table and gestured for me to take a seat. ‘How’s your holiday been, Miss Stanhope?’ He took a pen from the top of a sock.
‘Well, to be frank, it hasn’t been much of a holiday,’ I yawned. I’d been up since half three that morning to catch the first flight out of Launceston to Melbourne. It was upon my arrival there that I had been greeted by Bruce’s colleague who led me to the International terminal. ‘My time in Australia has been much like that reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Have you seen it?’
‘I don’t own a television,’ said Bruce.
‘Essentially, contestants race around the world on a kind of obstacle course and overcome challenges along the way in order to win the grand prize. They get to see some extraordinary sights but spend less than a day in each location. Imagine passing by the Taj Mahal on a public bus or approaching the gate of the Forbidden City but not going in.’
Stop talking, Ruby, hushed my head, but I needed Bruce to understand why I hadn’t submitted my working visa application form.
‘That’s what my time in Australia has been like. I’ve been to Melbourne, the Yarra Valley, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Cloncurry, Darwin and Launceston, to name a few, but I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t really had time to experience any of those places.’
‘I’m glad you raise your employment status. I saw a photograph of you in the Herald. It listed you as an advisor to the Leader of the Opposition. I see about a thousand new faces a day, but I remembered yours.’
‘Thank you, Bruce. You see, I don’t like being a drain on society like most tourists, so I got a job. As you might appreciate, things have been a bit hectic so I haven’t had time to complete and return this working visa thingy.’ I produced the scrunched form from the bottom of my laptop bag. It was in reasonably good nick aside from the coffee mug stain encircling a ‘sign here’ sticker.
‘Miss Stanhope,’ said Bruce, with folded arms, ‘I clearly recall warning you that your tourist visa did not permit you to seek employment here.’
‘I wouldn’t say I sought employment here; it sought me.’ Pipe down, Ruby!
‘Miss Stanhope, you have just admitted to violating the terms of your visa.’
‘Actually, Bruce, come to think of it, I forgot to sign the employment contract they sent me.’
Bruce put the blue pen back in his sock and pulled out a red one.
I went on. ‘Isn’t that astonishing? I never thought for a minute I would find myself working for nothing in Australian politics. I came out here for a holiday and thought I’d return to London with a few cases of wine as a souvenir and settle back into something in private equity, perhaps. Then I met Luke, who saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.’
‘Miss Stanhope—’
‘Hang on, Bruce, this is important. Banking didn’t make me happy. I was good at it but I didn’t love it. It wasn’t my bread. And here I am now with nothing but food and board and an empty bank account, but the work is so fulfilling that I’ve barely noticed my financial situation. And that, Bruce, is why I don’t have the right visa.’
‘Do you have access to a solicitor, Miss Stanhope?’
‘Ruby, mate,’ said Debs when I rang. ‘I’m in a meeting right now; can I call you back?’
‘I would say yes but I’m in a meeting too. With an Immigration official at Melbourne Airport who has just asked if I have access to a lawyer.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes max. Don’t say anything. Not a word. Shut the fuck up.’
Sure enough, thirty minutes later, she marched into the room entirely unflustered, threw her briefcase onto the table and said, ‘Deborah Llewellyn, acting for Ruby Stanhope—would you mind giving me a few minutes alone with my client?’
‘Please.’ He shut the door behind him.
‘Thanks for coming at such short notice,’ I said as she took Bruce’s chair opposite me.
‘No worries,’ she said, looking under the table. ‘Are those my pants?’
‘Yes,’ I said. There was no point in denying it.
‘And shirt?’
‘Yes.’ After a week in Tasmania, they were the only clean items in my Samsonite other than a bikini and sarong.
‘Why are you being questioned by an Immigration officer?’
‘I forgot to complete my working visa application form so Bruce says I’ve violated my conditions of entry.’
‘Who’s Bruce?’
‘The long-socked man outside.’
‘What kind of man wears long socks?’
‘Bruce and highlanders in kilts with sporrans.’
‘Does Bruce wear a sporran?’
‘Maybe on weekends. He seems to use his socks to store pens and
his glasses case, so he probably doesn’t need one. Listen, Debs, can we go back to how I’m going to get out of this situation?’
‘I’m no immigration lawyer, kiddo—there’s no money in it—but I watch enough Border Protection to know that you’re probably going to be asked to leave the country.’
‘But, you see, I can’t leave the country because we have an election in’—I counted my fingers—‘exactly twelve days, and Fran and Clem are arriving tomorrow.’
‘Bruce doesn’t strike me as the kind of public servant who would find either of those arguments compelling.’
‘Surely people do this sort of thing all the time. They can’t all be deported. Do you think they’ll seize my assets? Hopefully they won’t touch my shoes. I hardly have a cent to my name, having forgotten to sign my employment contract…’
‘Hang on, cupcake.’ She stopped rocking on her chair. ‘Are you telling me you’re not actually employed?’
‘Technically, no. That is to say, I tell people I work for Max Masters, I travel around the country on his plane, I keep expense receipts for the party to reimburse me—I must add that to my list—but I’ve never been paid by them.’
‘Let me make a few calls, kiddo. Stay here. Calm down. Don’t talk to Bruce.’ She left the room.
My BlackBerry vibrated violently across the table, but I couldn’t answer it. I could barely breathe. I don’t want to go, I thought. I can’t leave before the election. I’ve worked so hard for it. I want to win it and then I want to work for the government. The idea of missing the election because of a stupid administrative oversight was nauseating. I paced the perimeter of the small room.
I barely noticed that Debs was back. ‘Ruby, stop pacing and sit down.’
I did.
‘At the table, kiddo.’
I got up off the floor and took my seat opposite her.
‘I have a possible solution. Apparently we can argue you haven’t violated the terms of your visa because you were working in a voluntary capacity, but you’ll have to forgo remuneration for the period worked until your new visa is valid.’
