Dead Point

23

The rest of the day I spent on the half-dozen files I had open: a few letters of demand, a complaint about harassment by a landlord, a protest against an unjust parking fine. Then I did my hours and expenses for Cyril Wootton and faxed them to him.

Driving home in the early dusk, I put on the radio, caught the wheedling tones of a drive-time host called Barry Moran, a seminary flop who had joined the legion of other faith-challenged but inordinately sensitive people on radio. Barry was sensitive to the concerns of the young, the old, ordinary people, extraordinary people, the poor, the rich, the short, the tall, the middling, all religious beliefs, and the legitimate concerns of both sides in every dispute. He strove to be fair to everyone but had a tendency to be snappish with people who disagreed with his reasonable views. Unless they were powerful people, in which case his views quickly came to encompass theirs. He was saying:

… The Development Minister Tony DiAmato joins me now. Thanks for coming on the programme, Minister. Last week you washed your hands of the Cannon Ridge controversy because the previous government awarded the tender. It’s done, it’s history, you said. Now this is a tricky one, I know, Minister, but if the tender process was corrupted, don’t you have a duty to declare the tender void and hold an inquiry?

I thought about the library-warming, my attempts to make conversation with Mike Cundall. ‘Politics of business,’ he’d said. ‘WRG wants to build a whole fucking town on the Gippsland Lakes. Get the new government in some shit over Cannon, good chance they won’t get knocked back on that.’ Now the Minister cleared his throat.

Barry, we’re talking about allegations here. We’ve had a pretty good look at the documents and we can’t find any evidence of corruption.

Barry, ever the unctuous ex-seminarian, said: That’s a reasonable approach. Now Minister, I’d like to put a tricky one to you. WRG Resorts says a member of the tender evaluation panel was quote placed under duress unquote. Now I wouldn’t dream of saying the name but every media person in town has heard it. Do you know who the alleged person is?

The Minister sighed, tired at the end of the day.

No, I don’t. And Barry, I’m surprised at a person like you not recognising that WRG’s on a fishing expedition. They say they’ve got evidence. Where is it? They’ve yet to approach me with it.

Barry, nimble as ever: Of course, it might well be a fishing expedition, Minister, as you point out. We might take a call. It’s Steven from Doncaster.

A confident voice said: Hi Barry, love your show. About this Cannon Ridge business, everybody knows that in opposition this government put up a pissweak resistance to the sale of Cannon Ridge. Pissweak. They let the previous government sell off part of our heritage. Why’d you reckon? Because they’re in the Cundalls’ pockets like everyone else in this town.

Barry: Minister?

DiAmato, weary: Well, for a start, Anaxan has five major shareholders…

Caller: And one’s a Cundall. One’s all it takes. You know that…

It went on this way. I parked beneath the trees outside the boot factory, listened for a while, went upstairs and switched on the radio in the kitchen, tuned to Linda’s station.

… breaking up is hard to do. That’s what the old song says. But do men take it harder than women? Yes, says writer Phil Kashow in her new book, published today. It’s called Healing Your Broken Bits. I want your views on the subject. The author’s on the line from Sydney. Hello, Phil…

I stood in the room listening to the exchange, Linda’s mildly amused tone in dealing with the publicity-hungry woman. Then, without thought, I went into the sitting room and dialled the talkback number, pressed the redial button a dozen times until I got through to the producer.

‘Hello, you are?’

‘Jack from Fitzroy.’

‘And you want to say?’

‘I’m a psychotherapist and I’d like to shed a little…’

‘Stay on the line please, Jack.’

A wait, listening to people emoting, then Linda’s voice. ‘Jack from Fitzroy’s next. What’s your view, Jack?’

‘If breaking up is hard, how much harder is making up? That’s the question I’d like to pose to Phil. And to you, Linda.’

‘Excellent point, Jack,’ said Phil. ‘No simple answer. I deal with this in chapter sixteen of my book, called “Be proud and be lonely”…’

She talked rubbish for a good while, then Linda said, quickly, ‘And insofar as that question included me, not hard at all, Jack from Fitzroy. Moving on, Phil, you say…’

I switched off, found a bottle of Cooper’s Sparkling in the back of the fridge, stood around drinking it, thinking about Linda, what the remark meant, about who would want to give me the video of Marco and why. In the way of minds, I then veered off to Sandy the bashed plunge organiser, to my sister, to a despondent survey of the clutter of my life. A life that had no pivot, no fulcrum, no axis, no…

The phone.

‘Jack Irish.’

‘I’m in the ad break.’

Linda.

‘Ad break. I’m in the life break.’

‘Where?’

‘Donelli’s?’

‘Shit,’ Linda said. ‘Doesn’t anything change?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

‘Eight-thirty?’