The Brush-Off

by Shane Maloney

  Sproule went over to the minister’s desk and cleared a drawer into his briefcase. ‘A word to the wise, Murray. Those wogs you’ve been duchessing at Ethnic Affairs have got nothing on the culture vultures. Tear the flesh right off your bones, they will.’ Ken had climbed into the ring with some hard-nosed bastards over the years, and he spoke with genuine awe.

  ‘Going soft?’ I said.

  Sproule gave me a pitying look. ‘The first thing you should know about this job, pal, is that in this town the arts are a minefield. Everything from the pitch of the philharmonic to the influence of landscape painting on the national psyche is a matter of public debate. We’ve got more experimental film-makers, dramaturges and string quartets than you can poke a conductor’s baton at. And every last one of them has a direct line to the media. You’ve never seen so much colour and movement in all your life. Tell you, pal, it’s more than a can of worms, it’s a nest of vipers.’

  The purpose of this sob story, I took it, was to deflect any blame that might arise from unfinished business left by the departing team. ‘In other words,’ I deduced. ‘A time bomb is about to blow up in Agnelli’s face.’

  Sproule was innocence itself. ‘Keep your wits about you, that’s all I’m saying. Within a week you’ll be Mr Popularity, up to your arse in invitations to opening nights and gala exhibitions. The glitterati will be lining up to wine and dine you so they can piss in your pocket about how much public money their pet project deserves.’

  So what was new? Fending off lobbyists was a ministerial adviser’s bread and butter. Sproule had finished his packing. I shook his hand, formally accepting the helm. ‘Good luck with the coppers,’ I said. ‘See you round.’

  ‘Not if I see you first.’

  The instant that Sproule was gone, Veale reappeared with a folio-sized leather-bound diary and a well-stuffed manilla folder. We ran through the ministerial appointments for the next week, a predictable round of flag-showings and gladhandings. Nothing so pressing that Trish couldn’t take care of it when she arrived with Agnelli on Monday morning. Only one engagement was listed for the weekend. Karlin. 11.30 Saturday.

  ‘A small brunch,’ explained Veale. ‘To mark the acquisition of a rather significant painting by the Centre for Modern Art. The former minister agreed to say a few words of blessing. Given the changed circumstances, Max Karlin will doubtless understand that the new minister is unable to attend.’

  ‘Max Karlin?’

  ‘He’s hosting the occasion.’ Veale didn’t have to tell me who Max Karlin was. His name was in the paper every five minutes. A millionaire shoe salesman who had lately expanded out of footwear into property development. The half-completed Karlcraft Centre I’d passed on the way was his baby, a multi-storey retail and office complex rising on the site of his original downtown shop. ‘Karlin’s been collecting Australian modernist painting for more than twenty-five years. It’s one of his pictures the CMA is buying.’

  It suddenly occurred to me that this little luncheonette might serve a useful function. The conversation I’d overheard in Agnelli’s office had been replaying itself in the back of my mind, still ringing alarm bells. If Agnelli had indeed decided to re-invent himself as a bag man, Max Karlin would strike him as an obvious mark. Hard experience had taught me that Agnelli did not respond well to direct disagreement. But if I got the two of them together and kept a close eye on what ensued, I might be able to confirm how serious Agnelli was about his new sideline. And once I was clear on that point, I might stand some chance of putting an end to any such foolishness. If Agnelli had a high enough opinion of my abilities to keep me on the payroll, the least I could do was curb his more suicidal impulses.

  ‘Angelo is very interested in the visual arts,’ I said. ‘I’ll let him know about Mr Karlin’s invitation. Just in case.’

  Veale was inscrutably professional. ‘Very good,’ he said, closing the diary and handing me the manilla folder. It contained an avalanche of snow so deep it would take me weeks to dig myself free. Organisational charts, committee membership lists, advisory board structures, policies, draft policies, potential draft policies, terms of reference, annual reports, strategy plans, treaties with foreign potentates, fixtures for the staff association cricket club, a list of recent grant recipients. Heaving a heavy sigh, I took unenthusiastic possession.

  ‘Anything here on the Centre for Modern Art? I’m going to some sort of exhibition there tonight and I really don’t know much about the place.’ Precisely zip, in fact.

  Veale dealt me the relevant document. ‘Lloyd Eastlake’s not wasting any time taking you under his wing, I see.’

  I thought Veale must have been reading my mail until I opened the CMA annual report and scanned its list of office-bearers. Eastlake was the chairman. ‘I haven’t met him yet,’ I said. ‘But I’ve been told he’s very well regarded.’

  ‘Very,’ said Veale. His arid neutrality betrayed a hint of sniffiness. ‘Lloyd Eastlake chairs so many committees it’s a wonder he finds time to make a living. The CMA. The Music Festival. The Film Development Corporation. The Visual Arts Advisory Panel. The ALP policy committee, of course...’

  All political appointments, in other words. This Eastlake, whoever he was, was clearly making the most of his opportunities. On the league ladder of policy committees, Cultural Affairs was about as low as you could go. A clout-free zone. A sheltered workshop for no-hoper Upper House backbenchers. Old farts from the Musicians’ Union who once played the saxophone in three-piece wedding combos and now spent their declining years haunting thrash rock clubs trying to sign up roadies. Eastlake, alert to the perquisites of his chairmanship, had clearly set about making himself Labor’s man in the garden of culture.

  ‘A retired union official?’ I asked. ‘With a taste for trad jazz and the French New Wave?’

  ‘Financial services, actually,’ said Veale. ‘Started as a carpenter. Joined his father-in-law’s building firm back in the fifties, turned it into a major player in the housing industry, then sold up to concentrate on investment consulting.’ An ex-chippie made good. No wonder he got up Veale’s aristocratic nose.

  A large colour-field painting hung on the wall behind the minister’s desk. It was hard-edged, all surface, a bled-out pink with a broad stripe of yellow running right through the middle. Not unlike many in the party. Veale saw me looking over his shoulder and turned to follow my gaze. ‘Taste in pictures is such a personal matter,’ he said, as though he’d never seen the thing before in his life. ‘Does our master have a liking for something in particular?’

  Human blood, I nearly said. ‘Perhaps something to match his mental processes,’ I suggested.

  ‘Nothing too abstract then, I take it,’ said Veale, cocking a jovial eyebrow. I had a feeling that he and I were going to get along like a house on fire.

  Veale left me alone with my homework. I took it over to the big desk and started in. As well as the National Gallery, the State Theatre and the Concert Hall, all of which I could see out the window, Arts was the overseer-in-chief of everything from the State Library to a regional museum so small the brontosaurus skeleton had to stick its neck out the window. All up, the annual budget topped forty million. Not in the major league by any means, but enough to have some fun with. And enough to generate some pretty vocal squabbling, if Ken Sproule was to be believed.

  The list of recent grant recipients revealed some familiar names. The Turkish Welfare League had scored a thousand dollars to run traditional music classes for Turkish Youth. In my experience, your average Turkish youth preferred heavy metal to Anatolian folk songs. Doubtless the dough would go to pay a part-time social worker. At the other extreme, the Centre for Modern Art had copped three hundred grand for a ‘one-off extraordinary acquisition’. I wondered what you could acquire for that sort of cash.

  I closed the folder. Plenty of time for that sort of thing later. Reminding myself of more pressing realities, I rang Agnelli and caught him on the way to Government House for the swearing-in o
f the new Cabinet. I told him about the Karlin brunch invitation, making it sound like a minor formality, and asked for his okay to decline. Right on cue, at the magic words ‘Max Karlin’, he was dead keen.

  ‘It’s important that we maintain continuity of appointments during this transition,’ he said.

  ‘You’re the boss,’ I told him.

  By then, it was just on five o’clock. I was feeling a little parched in the back of the throat, but it was ninety minutes before I was due to meet this Lloyd Eastlake bloke. I was flicking absently through the Centre for Modern Art annual report when Phillip Veale’s well-barbered mane appeared around the door. ‘Drinkie winkies?’ he mouthed.

  I could tell immediately that I’d have to pull my socks up in the duds department if I ever hoped to cut the mustard in this culture caper. Aside from Phillip Veale’s two-tone shirt, I counted three bow ties, a pair of red braces and a Pierre Cardin blazer. And that was just what the women were wearing.

  All up, about fifteen people were milling about the conference room, enjoying what Veale described as the ministry’s customary end-of-week after-work convivial for staff and visiting clients. In no time at all, a glass of government-issue fizzy white had been thrust into my hand and the director had waltzed me about the room and presented me to sundry deputy directors and executive officers. The natives seemed affable enough and bid me welcome with the wary amiability of practised bureaucrats.

  Three drinks later, I was cornered by a large woman wearing a kaftan and what appeared to be Nigeria’s annual output of trade beads. ‘Does the new minister have strong interest in anything in particular?’ she asked. Her name was Peggy Wainright and she’d been introduced as the executive responsible for the visual arts.

  ‘The visual arts,’ I said. ‘Naturally. And puppetry, of course.’

  My lame wit fell on deaf ears. The woman grabbed my elbow and began to drag me through the throng. ‘In that case,’ she said. ‘You simply must meet Salina Fleet. She’s the visual arts editor of Veneer.’

  ‘Veneer?’

  ‘The leading journal of contemporary cultural criticism.’ In other words, an art magazine. Peggy was shocked I hadn’t heard of it. ‘Very influential.’ In other words, an art magazine with very few readers.

  One of the occupational hazards of working at Ethnic Affairs was the tendency it encouraged to categorise people on the basis of their names. In the case of, say, Agnelli or Mavramoustakides this was not difficult. Fleet was pure Anglo. Fleet as in First, as in Street. The Salina bit was definitely an exotic ring-in. I allowed myself to be propelled forward, already a little curious. ‘Here’s Salina now.’

  Salina Fleet was a gamine blonde with apricot lipstick and dangly white plastic earrings, her slightly tousled hair growing out of a razor cut. Her limbs were bare and lightly tanned and she was wearing a mu-mu with a fringe of pompoms and a palm-tree motif. Slung over her shoulder was a terry-towel beach-bag with hula-hoop handles. A surfie chick from a Frankie Avalon movie. She was about thirty, old enough to know better, so her intention was clearly ironic.

  ‘Salina’s on the Visual Arts Advisory Panel which makes recommendations on grants to artists and galleries,’ said Peggy, by way of introduction. ‘This is Murray Whelan. He’s on the new minister’s personal staff.’

  Salina Fleet turned from pouring herself a drink, cocked her budgerigar head and gave me a long, intelligent and frankly appraising look. ‘Really?’ she said. She reached into her beach-bag and drew out a pack of Kool. ‘How interesting.’ You had to admire her attention to period detail. I didn’t know they still made Kool.

  ‘The new minister has a strong interest in the visual arts,’ added Peggy. ‘And puppetry.’

  ‘Really?’ said Salina. A flicker of mischief played between her eyes and the corners of her apricot lips. ‘How interesting.’ She took a cigarette out of the pack.

  ‘You’re not going to smoke in here?’ said Peggy Wainright with alarm.

  ‘Mind if I have one of those?’ I said. I hated menthol cigarettes.

  Salina did some jokey huffy wiggly stuff with her shoulders. ‘I suppose we’d better be good boys and girls, then.’ She nodded towards a sliding glass door that opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking the trellised white tower of the Arts Centre. ‘Coming?’ She was certainly a live wire.

  We took our drinks outside, just us smokers. It was like stepping into an oven. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ Salina broke out the camphorated stogies and we both lit up. ‘Peggy’s a dear but she’s never off duty.’

  ‘Frankly I’m relieved,’ I said. ‘For a minute there I thought I’d have to pretend to know something about art.’

  ‘Pretence is essential in the art world.’ Salina exhaled a peppermint-scented cloud. Her fingernail polish was apricot, too. Perfect.

  ‘Any other tips for a novice?’ I was trying to pretend that my cigarette didn’t taste like fly spray.

  ‘The most important thing is always to keep a straight face. As long as you do that, anything is possible.’

  I accepted this advice with a grateful dip of my head. ‘Salina?’ I said. ‘Unusual name.’

  Too late, I realised that this must have sounded like a very lame come-on line. Do you come here often? What star sign are you?

  She didn’t seem to mind. ‘Literary,’ she said. ‘Lyrical, at least. The result of having an academic for a father.’

  The literary/lyrical reference was over my head. Troilus and Cressida. Tristan and Isolde. Starsky and Hutch. Salina and…?

  She came to my rescue. ‘Out in the west Texas town of El Paso,’ she began to recite:

  ‘I fell in love with a Mexican girl

  Night time would find me in Rosa’s cantina

  Music would play, Salina would whirl.’

  Either Salina’s father lacked all academic rigour or he was hard of hearing. I knew the song. Marty Robbins was on every juke box in every bar I’d ever worked in. As a publican’s son who had paid his way through university pulling beers, I had an acute ear for bar-room gunfight references in popular music. The Mexican maiden who did the whirling at Rosa’s cantina was called Felina, not Salina.

  ‘Your father’s academic discipline,’ I asked. ‘What did he teach?’

  ‘Three-point turns, mainly,’ she said. ‘And reverse parking. He was chief instructor at the Ajax Driving Academy. I followed in his footsteps. I teach cultural studies, part-time, at the Preston Institute of Technology.’

  PIT used to be a trade school for the motor industry. Not much call for that sort of thing any more. Not unless you were a Japanese robot. ‘Really?’ I said, like she might be having me on. ‘How interesting.’

  ‘Salina’s a bit prissy,’ she said. ‘You can call me Sal. But never Sally.’ No, she definitely wasn’t a Sally. And I didn’t care if she was having me on. At Ethnic Affairs, the only women who flirted with me either had moustaches or fathers with shotguns.

  ‘Her name was McGill,’ I said. ‘And she called herself Lil.’

  ‘But everyone knew her as Nancy,’ she replied. ‘The Beatles’ White Album is on my students’ required reading list.’

  Having a cigarette was one thing. Standing in a blast furnace was another. We ground our butts underfoot, toe to toe. ‘Let’s twist again,’ she said.

  ‘Like we did last summer,’ I closed the couplet.

  As we slipped back into the air-conditioned relief of the conference room, Phillip Veale materialised at my side. He pinged a fingernail on the rim of his glass. The crowd fell silent and turned our way. It was a jolly little speech, delivered in administrative shorthand.

  ‘Welcome to those just back from summer hols. A new year awaits. Exciting developments. Fresh challenges. Not least of which, a new minister, Angelo Agnelli, whose commitment is well known.’ Veale’s ambiguity raised an appreciative chuckle from the assembly. ‘A minister so keen he’s already sent his right-hand man to join us.’ Eyes darted my way, measuring my response. I tried to look sly. ‘So,�
� Veale raised his glass, staring directly at me. ‘The king is reshuffled. Long live the king.’ It was blatant flattery. Always the best kind.

  I glanced about for Salina Fleet but she must have slipped out under cover of the formalities. Pity, I thought. Still, I had no cause for complaint. Semi-secure employment, congenial surroundings, a drink or three, a little light buttering-up. A man could do worse.

  Outside, the late afternoon sun was turning the harsh concrete of the Arts Centre a glowing fauvist orange. Warning-light amber.

  It had gone 6.15 and the drinks crowd was thinning to a hard core. I took one last snort for sociability’s sake, slung my hook and headed downstairs. By rights, if my day had gone as planned, I should have been at the airport, meeting Red’s flight from Sydney. Instead, I was headed for the front of the National Gallery, under instructions to find a total stranger named Lloyd Eastlake so we could go look at some modern art together. Half an hour, I’d give it. Tops.

  A slab of shadow had fallen across the forecourt of the gallery. The mouse-hole curve of the gallery entrance dozed, a half-shut eye in a blank face. The crowds were gone, the tourist buses departed, the gelati vans pursuing more lucrative business at the bayside beaches. Later, theatre goers would begin to arrive. For now, apart from a trudging trickle of home-bound pedestrians and a pair of teenage lovers having a snog on the moat parapet, the place was deserted.

  Out on St Kilda Road, the tail end of the rush-hour traffic crawled impatiently towards the weekend, raising a desultory chorus of irritable toots. I propped on the edge of the moat, trailing my hands in the cool water, and waited for Lloyd Eastlake, Our Man in the Arts, to arrive. At least he wouldn’t have any trouble finding me.

  A slow five minutes went by. Romeo and Juliet broke off their tonsil hockey and wafted away, hand in hand. The passing trams became less crowded, less frequent. A silver Mercedes pulled into the Disabled Only parking bay in front of the gallery entrance, its interior concealed behind tinted windows. It sat there for a long moment, too late for the gallery, too early for the theatre. Then the back door opened and man in a suit got out. Well-heeled, self-assured, brisk. I recognised him instantly. The man I had seen coming out of Agnelli’s office earlier that afternoon.