The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

What I regretted was moving to Canberra, but I thought it churlish to admit that now. ‘No.’

‘And nor should you. Let that sustain you until the pain subsides.’

Over at the printer, Susie tentatively sniffed some pages and vomited.

‘I can’t wait that long.’

‘But you can and you have to.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘When did you find God?’

‘When Margaret died.’

‘Margaret?’

‘My dear wife. She passed a decade ago.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You know what Chesterton said? There is nothing more frightening than a labyrinth without a centre. That was my grief, Toby: a labyrinth without a centre. But then I found the confessions of Augustine, and contemplation became more urgent. More personal. I was still in a labyrinth, but one that I felt had a centre — Him. Augustine was my guide to the middle.’

‘How do you handle Tourette’s?’

‘I’ve made peace with my demon.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. It humbled me. It helped cure my intellectual vanity.’

‘What’s wrong with intellectual vanity?’

‘Well, for one, it was distancing me from Him.’

‘Oh.’

‘My parents always talked about the importance of an inner life, Toby. Having a head filled with interesting furniture, they’d say. I’m not saying I possess a great intellect. I don’t. I’m of modest intelligence. Others designed the furniture. I was just a hungry curator. At a young age, I discovered the pleasure of contemplation, but it was artificial, almost entirely aesthetic.

‘I was a smug guardian of my head. I regulated what it absorbed. I’ve never watched pornography, Toby. I’ve rarely watched TV, this place excepted. Yet my tapeworm spat the crudest vituperation — words and concepts I was barely conscious of. And what this told me, Toby, was that contrary to my belief in my own discernment, I am more sponge than gatekeeper. This is a very humbling thing to—’ Archie was cruelly interrupted by a stream of profanity, and jogged off to the Vault.*

[* ‘But you’ve learnt nothing, mate. You’re still as pretentious as three hats on a pony.’

I told Garry that I hadn’t heard this delicious slice of idiom either, but that unlike his other one — about a quark with a driver’s licence — it did chime authentically.]

I stared at my computer screen. Robot pilots. More than ever, the speech seemed grotesquely trivial, and I considered escaping to the pub. But Archie’s candour braced me. Still, I wasn’t sure how to write a speech that was stunned by paradox: its existence was predicated on concealing its own redundancy. My fingers rested dumbly on the wet keyboard. The screen’s cursor blinked. Then … our PA system spoke. Attention, attention! It’s that time of the month again! It’s … WILD WEDNESDAY! I could hear John groaning from the fishbowl.

Time for you DARING folks to let your hair down. Free face-painting for all workers is now available in the lobby, where we’ll also be selling crazy Wild Wednesday rubber bracelets! Proceeds will go to purchasing next month’s face paint. Don’t be shy!

I was never told about Wild Wednesday. I wished I had been. Corporate attempts at encouraging morale have always induced homicidal wrath in me. While studying at university, I once worked in the call centre for a company that shamelessly made and sold impaired hearing aids. When I learned of an imminent day of ‘team bonding’ — a treasure hunt in the local shopping mall, where we’d be made to wear pirate costumes — I decided to sabotage the event by calling and pretending to be a fanatically aggrieved customer, tipped off to our excursion and now threatening to individually ‘pick maggots off’ with a telescopic rifle:

‘Hello, Crystal Clear, Claire speaking.’

‘Hello?’

‘Hello. This is Claire speaking — how may I help you?’

‘Bear?’

‘Claire. How might I help you, sir?’

‘Listen, Bear, I’m struggling to hear you, and the reason for that is you’ve sold me two expensive craps to fit in my ears.’

‘I’m sorry about that, sir.’

‘Can’t hear you, Bear. But you can hear me. So listen …’

Before my eyes had dried, my phone rang. It was Stanley. He had another job for me. What he didn’t know was that I was teetering on the edge.

‘What I’m about to tell you is confidential, Toby.’

‘Sure.’

‘We haven’t gone public with this yet.’

‘Understood.’

‘But the Minister is very excited about it.’

‘Then so am I.’

‘We’ve been designing a pilot program with DSP’ — the Department of Sport and Pride.

‘What is it?’

‘Well, we’re going to re-create the conditions that gave birth to our greatest ever bowler.’

‘Terry Alderman?’

‘Warnie, you weird prick.’

‘How?’

‘We’ll install bakeries and tobacconists at every cricketing academy in the country.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘We’re calling it “Back to the Future”.’

‘You’re not joking?’

‘Talent scouting’s ineffective, Toby. And biomechanics can only refine talent — it can’t produce it. Plus, it’s fucking boring. There’re no myths in biomechanics. The public can’t get excited by seeing talent improve through discipline and science. The people don’t want automatons, Toby. They want talent that flourishes … unexpectedly.’

‘Hmm.’

‘What’s more, the people are fucking sick of corporatised cricket. And I can’t blame them. They hate the sport’s administrators. Hate how they gag their athletes. Hate the political correctness and the five-year plans. It’s all so fucking sterile. And you know what?’

‘What?’

‘It’s lethal to larrikins. You follow?’

‘Not really.’

‘The corporates have cut a link to our past. Cricket strategy used to be: Unbutton your shirt, son, and go break some Pom jaws. Now it’s a 10-point plan written by an ethics committee. The sport’s a fucking shell, Toby. The suits have hollowed it out. We’ve allowed these cunts to rob athletes of their personality and the public of their legends. And has this new order created on-field success? Please. Has it created another Warnie? Like fuck it has. So we have a plan to restore that golden grit to our game, while encouraging the conditions necessary for genius to flourish.’

‘With pies and smokes.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Wasn’t Warne’s talent in spite of the pies and smokes, and not because of them?’

‘Well, it obviously didn’t harm his talent, did it? And you’re not listening, Toby: the public love this shit.’

‘Wouldn’t selling smokes at sports academies break the law?’

‘We’re working