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

while. I didn’t have words for it then. For the loss. Actually, I still don’t have them. There’s just an image.’

‘Of what?’

‘It’s not an image, actually. It’s nothing that definite. When I think of that time, I just see spilt ink. Smudged greys and blues. No picture, just a smear. A stain. And it’s evocative, that stain. And those inks are probably still in my system. Influential in ways I never gave myself time to consider. I never saw a therapist about it. Never saw the need.’ And the Prime Minister took an anguished look at his glass of water. ‘How was that?’

‘Oblique, but extremely touching.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Can I ask: how did your mother die?’

‘She …’ And suddenly the Prime Minister became ashen. ‘Jesus.’

‘What?’

‘She drowned.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Is this my Rosebud?’

‘Have you never considered this link before?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve never wondered how your mother’s death may have created certain fears?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Perhaps the better question, Prime Minister, is: why wouldn’t you do that?’

‘Because I’m fucking busy, Andrew.’

‘Are you afraid of water?’

‘I resent having to drink it.’

‘What else?’

‘Hoses scare me. I think droughts are good.’

‘What’s your favourite season?’

‘El Niño.’

‘Hmm.’

‘When NASA said they’d found no evidence of water on Mars, I thought: Great. Take me there.’

‘Can I ask you a difficult question?’

‘Sure.’

‘How’s the personal hygiene?’

‘Another good question.’

‘What’s the answer?’

‘I have a shower routine.’

‘And baths?’

‘God, no.’

‘Okay.’

‘My routine’s been perfected over many years.’

‘Do you mind sharing it?’

‘Nose peg, swimming cap, and six Valium.’

‘Right.’

‘Once I’m in there, I start the waterproof timer. Five minutes. Used to be just two.’

‘Well, that’s hopeful. Then what?’

‘Then I sing the national anthem.’

‘While you shower?’

‘That’s right. There’s enough time to sing all four verses.’

‘There’s four?’

‘Originally. We shaved two, and rewrote one.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘There was some crazy stuff about scurvy and cannibalism.’

‘Really?’

‘Maybe, I don’t really understand them.’

‘“Girt by sea” must be hard to sing.’

‘I’ll tell you what’s hard, Andrew: singing that melody. It’s dead on arrival. Flatlined. I’ll tell you, that song is so soporific that it should never be mixed with Valium.’ The Prime Minister paused. ‘Can you drown in the shower?’

‘I wouldn’t think so.’

‘I need a new song. Our anthem’s a death trap.’

‘Respectfully, that doesn’t sound like what you need.’

‘Well, then, tell me what I do need.’

‘Less Valium. And almost certainly a therapist.’

‘Possibly.’

‘It seems you have extreme aquaphobia, Prime Minister. And perhaps it’s damaging the quality of your life and decision making.’

‘Aquaphobia?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a thing?’

‘Evidently.’

‘Water killed my mother.’

‘Tragically. And yet it remains the basis of all life on Earth.’

‘It’s very smug about that.’

‘My producer is waving something at me, Prime Minister,’ and Denton peered through the glare of stage-lights. It was a giant Super Soaker.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘That could bring down a Dreamliner.’

The producer handed it to Denton.

‘Prime Minister, would you consent to some exposure therapy?’

‘Oh, God.’

‘There’s no obligation, Prime Minister.’

‘I did promise you my electricity, didn’t I?’

I left before Denton soaked the Prime Minister, causing him to hyperventilate and briefly lose consciousness. Experiencing what I think was guilt, I’d suddenly felt dizzy and overwhelmed myself. I turned my phone off, left The Lodge, and walked the few kilometres to the well-tended rose garden of Old Parliament House. I found a bench.

I always felt good there. And not only in the gardens. I loved the building. You couldn’t mistake Old Parliament House for a spaceship. I’d spent many hours inside, admiring its modest classicism, its leafy courtyards, its verandahs and timber. I loved the fact that a provisional building designed for just fifty years had outlived its shelf life by a decade and become desperately overcrowded. Long decommissioned, it had retained its fixtures and furniture, and I’d stare at brown filing cabinets in rooms the size of telephone booths — rooms that were adjacent to major corridors — and wonder how secrets and cordiality functioned within this sultry compression. In the end, 3,000 people had occupied a space originally designed for a tenth of that number. I finished my cigarette and turned my phone back on. There were a dozen missed calls, and almost 50 new text messages. Most were variations on Patrick’s: ‘You’ve really fucked us.’

It was election night, and the pollsters had it even. Commentators were humbled, astonished, and in the last week of the campaign, reflecting upon the alleged parity of the two contestants, incredulous opinion pieces fell like snow upon a remote mountaintop. Then melted, unseen.

But something inscrutable was happening out there — out in the endlessly imagined, divined, scolded, coddled, praised, condescended, and appropriated chimera of Voter Land. But what the fuck was it?

Meanwhile, I’d rewired the Prime Minister. LSD had largely overwritten his PolSpeak, and only occasionally would the old program haunt his speech. The PM’s lunacy gave the opposition leader his strategy: do nothing. Stand back, admire the flames, and be grateful. But a week passed, then another, and the polls were still … unusual. Surely the methodology was unsound, and not the people? Then another week passed, and it seemed less likely that the polling was dodgy. So — what was it? Were the voters engaged in some strange but ephemeral flirtation? When they whispered their preference for the mad man to the pollster, it was done without consequence — but surely their flirtation could not survive the reality of their ballot paper?

Then another week passed. Something was definitely going on. Something more than flirtation. Maybe the people saw PolSpeak as a virus, and insanity looked like its cure. Whatever it was, the opposition leader panicked. His invisibility was tactical, not a measure of grace, and having forfeited so much time to assert himself — as he knew he now must — he became desperate. Suddenly, he desired ubiquity, and he achieved this with a string of wild and improvised announcements: shark bounties, a national coal museum, regression to the pound sterling, and raising the age of consent to 35. He was playing catch up.

So on election night, we were competitive — but this extraordinary fact had still not endeared me to the PM’s staff because their exclusion from what now appeared