The Speechwriter Read online

  After a year mostly spent digitally retouching my boss’s face, my ability to peacefully absorb his condescension — as well as Stuart’s factional alignment — commended me for a junior role in the Premier’s office.

  I would be paid. I would be an angel. I would be a speechwriter.

  When I heard the news, I thought that such volumes of happy magic gushed inside me that I could recover Father’s corpse and breathe life back into him. I left my desk to go outside and enjoy the moment quietly, but the feral cats chased me back in.

  A blown opportunity

  I have a simple, unoriginal theory: The West Wing’s fantasy of soulful, hyper-competent political staffers encouraged a generation of self-regarding clowns to join politics in order to imitate them. A generation of callow staffers who experienced the TV series as an alluring dream with which to translate their own humble reality. What this generation chose to hear from Aaron Sorkin’s relentless coke-patter was that they were the brilliant mechanics of democracy. They quoted lines, and debated which characters they most resembled. Tipsy with fantasy, they failed to see the comic incongruity between their own work and the melodramatic nobility of their TV counterparts. And I was one of them.*

  [* Garry says he’s never heard of The West Wing, but wants me to include here his top three TV shows of all time and his quick explanation of their ‘magic’:

  1. MacGyver: Don’t know many folks who haven’t dreamed about fucken up some sneaky, smack-peddling Russians with a bulldog clip and some sugar. How the fuck did the writers come up with this shit?

  2. Grand Designs: This shit stirs the swarm of bees in my heart. Tell me, Toby: does a man need a roof, or does he not? Is a roof a right, or a fucken privilege? This show makes a roof a tittie mag for rich cunts. Tune in, and you’ve got some prick who got rich designing the new Woollies logo who’s nervous about replicating a Tunisian cave in Somerset. You shit-eating cunt. And I fucken love it, Toby.

  3. M*A*S*H*: Maybe the only time I cried, other than when me ol’ lady died, was that last episode. Did Hawkeye and BJ ever see each other again? Fucked if I know. Can’t spend much time thinking about it, if I’m honest. It’s too much.]

  ‘I’m Josh,’ David said the first time we met. David was the head of the dirt squad, though its official designation was the Parliamentary Research Unit. He was referring to Josh Lyman, imaginary deputy chief-of-staff to the imaginary President Jed Bartlett.

  ‘I’m CJ,’ I said, referring to the imaginary press secretary.

  We wore self-regard like a creep wears a trench coat. We bounced down hallways with witless self-assurance, emulating the verve and purposeful movement of the West Wing characters. But emulating their eloquence, courage, and intellect was another thing. Where the West Wing heroes had a scriptwriter to polish their souls and their banter, we had only ourselves.

  Initially, I thought David was another noble, grit-faced miner at the coalface of democracy, but really he just supervised a young and dispirited team tasked with finding compromising facts about political opponents. It wasn’t Mossad. They weren’t bugging rooms, backgrounding reporters, or meeting rogue cops in dives. They had no investigative powers or skill, and were limited to trawling Hansard and newspaper clippings for contradictory statements that might cause some fleeting and obscure embarrassment in parliament. It was a petty and banal grind, worsened by their boss’s insistence that their work resembled ‘the construction of the ancient pyramids’.

  My job was to write minor speeches for the Premier. I read nothing but political hagiographies, which I piled ostentatiously on my desk and would occasionally consult if I wanted to elevate a speech on the opening of a new swimming lane at a local rec centre.

  It was also my job to chaperone the Premier and members of cabinet on excursions to bowls clubs. We called it Community Cabinet, and it allowed citizens to meet their leaders and discuss the issue most important to them: daylight savings.

  The Premier had begun a three-year trial, which was to be followed by a referendum in which the people could vote to reject or retain it. If you were over 60, there was a good chance you thought the issue of greater significance than death or taxes. And so, having secured the ear of the Premier, Treasurer, or Attorney-General, the opportunity was used to argue the moral tragedy of shifting our clocks one hour in summer.

  But if that’s what The People wanted to talk about, then I would gratefully facilitate it. I would earnestly pace the clubroom with pen and notepad, asking those who were at the back of long queues, and in danger of not finding their attentive surrogate, if I could take their name, number, and issue so the Premier’s office could respond to them later.

  ‘Yes, you can,’ they’d say. ‘Take this down in your fancy notepad: We’ve already had a referendum on this.’

  ‘On daylight savings?’

  ‘Well, what else could I be talking about?’

  ‘Ma’am, that referendum was twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘And we said No. You’re too young to remember.’

  ‘But I do remember. And things change. We think enough time has passed to put it to the people again. I’m not arguing a side, I’m just saying that it’s time to publicly ask the question again.’

  ‘Daylight savings is disgusting. I get up at 4.30 in the morning, and it’s important that I do so with a sliver of light.’

  I looked up from my notebook at the long line of aggrieved, sliver-of-light-loving pensioners.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ the woman asked. ‘We’ve already had a referendum on this.’

  ‘You’ve said that, ma’am. We’ve also already had a referendum on this government, but we will continue to hold elections. How are the scones?’

  Believing that there were more important things to discuss in the public life of the state, my speech for the Premier wasn’t entirely devoted to the issue. But as was common, and sensible, the Premier abandoned my script for an improvised riff on the great issue at hand. ‘Now, I know a few of you are concerned about daylight savings,’ he would say, as if he were a neurosurgeon delicately broaching the risks of operating with a patient. ‘Personally, I don’t like it. I like to swim in the morning. I like the extra hour of light when I dip into the ocean.’

  This triviality was received like a heroic confession, and you could sense the crowd softening their hostility. This guy was okay. He liked to swim in the morning. He had worked the room, but also confirmed for them that the only way to view the policy was through their own tiny preference. He had validated them. ‘See, he gets it,’ the old lady said to me.

  Afterwards, the Premier said something about the rivers of mining royalties and what we might do with them, but it wasn’t clear to me what he meant, and it didn’t seem to matter to the crowd, who were already shuffling towards death and their second lamington, safe in the knowledge that their Premier liked to swim in the morning.

  And this, ladies and gentlemen, was Community Cabinet.

  And it thrilled me.

  The conventional wisdom about the state’s opposition leader, Trevor Goodlight, was that he was a brainy larrikin — a boozer with an abacus. He appeared to enjoy this distinction, but in fact it cleaved him profoundly. To be both reckless exhibitionist and public leader is a delicate gig, especially when you have a lusty affair with the grog. His charm seemed partly funded by his serial flirtations with self-destruction, like when, with his signature vulgarity, he lit a fart while wearing a sumo suit at the opening of a Japanese restaurant, and was lucky to only need two skin grafts and not a lawyer to defend manslaughter charges.

  Many in the party knew of the rumour before I did, but so weird and squalid was it that most assumed it would irradiate the reputation of anyone who sought to use it politically. This was the problem with having something truly dirty — there was filth by association. There was no doubt that, if true, it would end his leadership, but senior staff were
apprehensive about the costs of using it, or, more precisely, of being seen to be using it.

  ‘Have you heard about Goodlight?’ Emily asked me. Emily was bright but caustic, and she told me that she enjoyed my company because I reminded her of a very smart child.

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll want to.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘During the last recess,’ Emily said, ‘Goodlight, one of his staffers, and an old uni mate head down south for a weekend.’

  ‘Down south’ was WA’s lush south-west region, renowned for its wine, waves, and wealthy hippies. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘They’ve known each other for a while.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘They’ve got these rituals.’

  ‘Speed this up, Em.’

  Emily, defiantly not speeding things up, took a theatrically long slug of Guinness. Then, with the speed of a glacier, planted her pint back upon its coaster.

  ‘In a humble pub in Yallingup, our trio commence what they call “The Slalom”.’

  ‘The Slalom?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It was conceived as a pub crawl,’ Emily said. ‘An endurance trial. But this year, it will fatefully devolve into an Olympics of transgression.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘In their first pub — let’s call it The Thumb and Spleen — our competitors begin their journey with the region’s finest pinot noir, to the disdain of the publican, who prefers, in spite of his own financial interests, that his male patrons sink beer.’

  ‘You cannot possibly know this.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re embroidering this story to frustrate me.’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So they drink. Wine, beer, fuck knows. But it’s a lot. And in this pub, right, our pissed amigos tweak the rules to The Slalom.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They include dares and jests — feats of intestinal fortitude.’

  ‘This won’t end well.’

  ‘It doesn’t. So in The Thumb and Spleen, Goodlight examines the jukebox. And there it is, the great sing-a-long: “American Pie”.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So Goodlight brings up the lyrics on his phone, hands it to his mate, then slots two of the Queen’s dollars into the music box. His challenge to his old chum is to sing along at the bar.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’

  ‘We’re just beginning the story.’

  ‘And I’m asking you to come to the point.’

  ‘I’m sketching something important here. The anatomy of transgression. It begins innocently. Road trip, old mates, bonhomie. But buried in these warm rituals are insecurities. Ghosts. Just needs a little binge drinking to give them relief.’

  ‘Hurry up.’

  ‘So they sing “American Pie”, breaching a threshold of decorum and inspiring an hour of obnoxious karaoke. Presumably they’ve alienated the whole pub — except for a couple of dairy farmers who recognise Goodlight and are thrilled to find his company. They approach the three tenors, say g’day, and Goodlight shouts them drinks. Then more drinks. Now, these cow folk are sympathetic to his party. Not rusted on, but they’ve swung that way, you know. And fuck, the next premier is shouting Jägermeister and singing Cat Stevens with you. That’s cool, right? That’s something. And his mates, who must’ve smelt the vapours of his self-destruction before, are like: “This guy’s fucking great, he’s salt, and he’ll run our state” but—’

  ‘Emily, there’s no way you know this.’

  ‘What are you disputing?’

  ‘Jägermeister. Cat Stevens. The granular fucking detail.’

  ‘As I’ve said, Toby, I’m sketching the body of a fact. And if I draw some fictitious muscle, it’s only to better show you truth’s heart.’*

  [* ‘She said this?’ Garry asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Exactly like this?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘It’s a fucken weird coincidence that she speaks like you.’

  ‘That’s just how she speaks, mate.’]

  ‘The heart is a muscle.’

  ‘Do you want to hear this story or not?’

  ‘I want you to quicken your pace.’

  ‘Okay, so it’s closing time at the Thumb, but the cow folk say that there’s this other place — “just 20 minutes away, we can give you a lift”. And I mean, you’d call it a night now, right? But it’s Goodsy’s call, all eyes are on him, and he wants more risk and more liquid, so the three amigos climb in the ute’s tray and get a ride to The Tweed Pussy.

  ‘The five of them enter, which immediately doubles the number of people in the place. They’re not gonna be open for long, but happily the two chaperones — the cow folk — are regulars at The Tweed, and they order four jugs of piss, and some salt and vinegar chips.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure that you are. The next premier is in The Tweed Pussy at 1.05am with a cracked bowl of chips and four jugs of lager. Nothing good happens there after 1am, Toby. And these people aren’t his friends. None of them. Not the cow folk. Not the ones who’ve known him for twenty years. You know what they are?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Spectators.’

  ‘I’m still waiting for the scandal.’

  ‘Mate, if it was just a scandal, I’d have told you by now. What I’m giving you is a tragedy.’ Emily sipped her pint slowly again. ‘So the four jugs are emptied hurriedly, and the five of them are playing bad pool when Goodsy conceives the second test.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The loser of the next game must stand on the pool table, nominate a pocket, and piss in it.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Uh-huh. So the game’s played and lost by one of Goodsy’s old mates, who’s now obliged to defile the table. Reluctantly, he does so. Glimpsing this obscenity, the indignant owner takes the offender’s legs out with a broom and expels the men from the pub. Now what? Home? Please. Onwards! To the farm! It’s only gonna be once that you take the next premier home. And Goodsy doesn’t want to let the team down. He’d rather be liked than respected. Not that he’s not enjoying himself. But, Toby?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The abyss beckons. So they fly recklessly down narrow country roads. The three amigos are in the back, bellowing, sucking marrow from the bone—’

  ‘Wait, where’d the bone come from?’

  ‘It’s a metaphor, Toby. The bone’s life, the marrow its raw pleasures.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So Goodsy jumps out at the farm’s gate, opens it, and watches the ute snake up the hill to the house. The next premier follows on foot, traipsing through mud, his pants wet, filthy. Reunited with the four on the farmstead’s verandah, he takes the bottle of bourbon that’s offered, swigs it, and says, “Lotta fucking cows you got here”. Which is true. There’s a lotta fucking cows. And one of the custodians of these noble beasts, he says, “You should see the cocks on these bastards.” And so Goodsy gets his idea: the ultimate finale.’

  ‘So what’s he do?’

  ‘He reminds the boys of The Slalom, of course. Says they haven’t fulfilled its obligations. So they say, “What do you have in mind?” And he says, “Let’s toss a coin. Loser sucks a cow’s dick.” And his old mates laugh, while the farm folk say that a cow doesn’t have a dick on account of it being female. And Goodsy pulls out a coin, tosses it high in the air, and tells his mate to call it. “Tails,” his mate says, and, funnily enough, it’s a fucking head. So Goodsy says, “Shit.” And everyone laughs, no-one believing that the next premier is actually going to fellate livestock. But off he staggers, towards the abyss, the four following, laughing, but then, incredulous, they realise … Jesus Christ A
lmighty.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘They filmed it.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘The election’s ours.’

  ‘What if he’s not well?’

  ‘Then we win.’*

  [* Garry says that bestiality is ‘no laughing matter’, and he’s reminded me that he recently bashed a prisoner who was convicted of ‘buggering a Peruvian llama’.]

  A meeting was called in the Premier’s office with the dirt squad and key staff. ‘What do we do with this cow fucking,’ the chief-of-staff said. She sat commandingly at the head of the table, strongly giving the impression that no-one would leave the room until there was a satisfactory response to this cow-fucking business. This was my first time in the room, and I was thrilled to be here, even if the context wasn’t quite Sorkin-esque.

  ‘Let’s define our terms here,’ the media adviser said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the chief-of-staff.

  ‘We know what it is, but what do we call it? It’s beneath the dignity of the Premier’s office to refer to it as “cow-fucking”. We need to push this information out, but not reveal that we have, nor can we refer to the act by its more … colloquial descriptions.’

  ‘Plausible deniability,’ David said solemnly.

  ‘Fuck me,’ the chief-of-staff said. ‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. So let’s get this straight. The first question is: do we push this out at all, and if so, how do we do it? The second question, dependent upon the first, is: how do we respond once the story is picked up by the press? Let’s not answer the second until we have a response to the first.’

  ‘We can gut him,’ David said, his tongue flashing excitedly. ‘Push it out, call a press conference, and denounce this cow-fucker as a disgrace against God.’

  ‘Did he actually fuck a cow?’ the policy director asked. ‘I’m still getting my head around this.’

  I hadn’t anticipated saying anything, but I thought everyone was way off on bovine gender. ‘He didn’t fuck a cow,’ I said. ‘A cow is the female. He blew a bull.’