Sucked In (3 page)

I locked the car and entered the arcade. Exchanging familiar nods with the track-suited layabouts at their table outside the nut shop, I bought two takeaway coffees at Vida's Lunch'n'Munch, then pushed open a plate-glass door with my name on it.

Murray Whelan—Member of the Legislative Council—Province
of Melbourne Upper.

My reception area contained six metal-frame chairs upholstered in fish-belly vinyl, a side-table strewn with information brochures, three framed prints from the Victorian Tourism Commission, an artificial fern,
Philodendron bogus,
and one modular reception desk, off-white.

A teenage girl in track pants, a Mooks sweatshirt and a hijab was leaning on the desk, a slumbering child in a cheap fold-up stroller parked beside her.

‘Anyway,' she was saying. ‘I reckon it sucks.'

Sitting behind the desk was my electorate officer, Ayisha Celik. ‘Sucks big-time,' she said. ‘But Supporting Mothers Benefits are a commonwealth matter. We're state. You've come to the wrong place, I'm afraid.' She clicked her tongue and gave an empathetic shrug.

Empathy was one of Ayisha's strong suits, along with a good memory for names, extensive networks, an inside knowledge of the bureaucracy and a well-tuned political antenna. The package made her indispensable to the smooth functioning of my retail operations. Parliamentary matters, the upstream side of the business, she left to me.

The girl in the hijab heaved a resigned sigh and angled the stroller towards the exit, another dissatisfied customer. I held the door open and gave her my most benign smile. She looked at me with a mixture of contempt and pity. The baby started to wail. A normal reaction all round. It came with the territory.

Ayisha reached across the desk and relieved me of one of the coffees. Done up in her funeral weeds, a navy pants suit and cream blouse, her jet black hair piled up in a mushroom, she could've passed for an SBS newsreader. Back when I first met her, the resident radical spunk at the Turkish Welfare League, she favoured skintight jeans and a
keffiyeh
. But that was before a career in public administration had dampened her activist zeal and two children had gone to her hips.

‘So Charlie Talbot is laid to rest.' Ayisha raised her polystyrene cup.

I returned the salute. ‘And now the games begin. I've just had Barry Quinlan pissing on my lamp-post.'

She cocked her head at the glass wall that separated the reception area from the inner office. Through the angled slats of half-closed slimline venetians, I could see a dark-suited figure sitting at the conference table.

‘Speaking of which, Mike would like a word.'

I locked the front door, hung up the CLOSED sign and followed Ayisha into the windowless heart of my political fiefdom. A laminex-topped conference table occupied most of the room. The rest was taken up by an Uluru-sized photocopier-printer, a row of filing cabinets, a steel stationery cupboard and three colour-coded recycling bins. Office Beautiful.

Our visitor was a slim, good-looking man in his late thirties with close-shaved olive skin and the liquid eyes of an Orthodox icon. He, too, had come straight from the cemetery. Come, I assumed, to ventilate the pressing topic of the moment, Charlie Talbot's succession.

‘
Yasou
,' I said.

Michelis Kyriakis had trodden the well-beaten path from immigrant childhood to university to local politics. He'd worked for Charlie Talbot for a while, keeping the home fires burning while Charlie was busy running the country. Now he was mayor of Broadmeadows, the
primus inter pares
of the coterie of Laborites who controlled the sprawling municipality at the centre of the seat of Coolaroo. Capable, energetic and well-motivated, he was going to waste in the small world of roads, rates and rubbish. This fact had not escaped his attention.

‘Sorry if it looks pushy, mate, turning up like this straight after the funeral,' he said. ‘But things are moving pretty fast.'

I sat down, facing him across the table. ‘I've been a bit tied up, Mike, dealing with the undertakers and so forth, but I've heard murmurings about the FEA being convened ASAP.'

A conclave of local branch members and delegates appointed by the central machine, the Federal Electorate Assembly would select Charlie's successor.

‘Saturday week,' said Mike. ‘Ten days away. That must be a record.'

Ayisha perched herself on the desktop, legs dangling. ‘The FEA's just a formality, you know that,' she said. ‘There's a cross-factional agreement that the next federal vacancy in Victoria goes to the Left.'

‘Yeah, but who in the Left?' said Mike. ‘Charlie promised me that I'd get the seat when he retired. But now that he's gone, I've been sidelined. I'm out of the loop and it's obvious somebody else has been given the nod.'

I shrugged and showed him my empty palms. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Mike. Better, in fact. You are a member of the Left, after all.' I turned to Ayisha and raised an eyebrow. ‘You heard anything?'

‘Not a whisper,' she said. ‘None of the usual suspects at state level have been mentioned, not that I've heard.'

‘Maybe they're airlifting somebody in from Canberra,' I shrugged.

Mike made an acid face. ‘Fucking typical,' he said. ‘You put in the time, pay your dues, bust your gut, then some prick nobody knows gets handed a seat on a platter. Waltzes in, brushes you aside and you're expected to grin and bear it.'

‘Welcome to the Labor Party,' I said. Or any party, for that matter. Mike knew the rules. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

‘What would you say if I told you I'm thinking about throwing my hat into the ring?' he said.

I glanced sideways at Ayisha. She widened her eyes in mock horror. Mike had a lot of friends, us included, but he lacked clout in the places that counted.

‘I'd say you'll be pushing shit uphill,' I said. ‘It's obviously a done deal.'

‘Even so,' he said. ‘It's a matter of principle.'

Principle. The weeping scab of the Australian Labor Party.

‘Climb aboard your saw-horse if you like, Mike. Point it at the windmill. Wave your lance around. But tell me, end of the day, what'll you get for your trouble?'

Mike straightened up and fixed me with the earnest expression he used for citizenship ceremonies. ‘I feel very strongly about this, Murray. And I'd like your support. You've got a lot of sway in this part of the electorate.'

I ought to, I thought. I was paying the annual dues of half the branch members.

‘You'd be an ornament to federal parliament, Mike,' I said. ‘And I'm not the only one who thinks so. But you know the current party line. Heads down, bums up, noses to the grindstone. Strictly no muttering in the ranks. I'd need some pretty compelling reasons to buck company policy. Apart from my profound admiration for your personal qualities, of course.'

‘Fuck you, too, comrade,' said Mike, letting out a little air. ‘It's not like a bit of grass-roots democracy is going to damage our electoral prospects, since we currently have none. And by the time the next federal election rolls around, the punters will have forgotten all about it anyway.'

‘Probably,' I agreed. ‘But you've got to appreciate my situation.'

Mike nodded. ‘I know I've got nothing to offer in return,' he said. ‘I'm just trying to be straight with you, that's all. Your help would mean a lot to me.'

I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms, pursed my lips and impersonated a man wrestling with his conscience.

‘Tell you what,' I said at last. ‘Why don't we sleep on it? Nominations don't close until next week. By then, we'll know the identity of the mystery candidate and meanwhile you can do your arithmetic, see how the numbers stack up. We'll talk again after the weekend.'

Mike knew it was the best he could expect for the moment. He stood and extended his hand. ‘Fair enough.' We shook on our mutual good sense. ‘See you at the wake, then. Broady town hall, right? Sundy arvo.'

Mike had taken upon himself to organise an informal send-off for Charlie, one for the constituents rather than the apparatchiks. Broadmeadows Town Hall was Mike's home turf. A good choice of venue for a man with his eye on the empty saddle.

Ayisha showed him to the door and came back grinning. ‘Did that sound to you like a wheel squeaking?'

Mike Kyriakis hadn't come down in the last shower. He was well aware that he didn't stand a snowball's chance of elbowing his way into serious contention. But he also knew that by threatening to upset the apple cart with a grass-roots lunge, he might be offered an inducement to drop out. The promise of a seat, possibly, or even a paying job. At the very minimum, he'd be noticed—the essential requirement of political survival. Either way, it would cost him nothing to take a shot.

‘He can squeak all he likes,' I said. ‘But I don't think it'll get him any grease.'

Ayisha fished a blank sheet of paper from the photocopier feeder tray and put it on the table between us.

‘Coolaroo,' she said, drawing an elongated circle with a black marker pen. ‘An aboriginal word meaning “the Balkans”.' She drew a second circle, overlapping the bottom edge of the first. ‘Melbourne Upper.'

She hatched the circles with a series of crosses. ‘Coolaroo's got about a thousand party members spread across ten branches. Four of the branches are down here, inside Melbourne Upper. Those four only account for about a quarter of the total membership.' She jabbed her pen into the top circle. ‘Anybody considering a run will need major support here.'

‘In other words, somebody acceptable to the Turks, the Lebanese and the Greeks,' I said.

‘An Anglo,' confirmed Ayisha. ‘Somebody neutral who can balance out the competing sensitivities of those wonderfully inclusive communities.'

‘I guess we'll know soon enough,' I said, glancing at my watch. ‘Won't your kids be wondering if their mother's still alive?'

‘Shit!' Ayisha grimaced and dashed for the door. ‘Mail's on your desk. Usual bumph, nothing urgent. Bye.'

I ambled into my private office, a glass-walled cubicle distinguished only by a view across the K-Mart carpark towards the Green Fingers garden centre. I yawned, sprinkled some slow-release fertiliser granules on my African violet, plonked myself in my ergonomic executive chair and waded into my overflowing in-tray.

Even in opposition, the flag must be flown, the good fight fought, the flesh pressed, the creed recited, the candle kept burning. Over the next couple of weeks, according to the priorities flagged by Ayisha's multi-coloured post-its, my presence was required at the Housing Justice Roundtable, the Save the Medical Service Action Committee, a performance by the Glenroy Women's Choir, the Greening Melbourne Forum, Eritrean Peace Day, the Sydney Road Chamber of Commerce, the Free East Timor Association and a citizenship ceremony at Coburg Town Hall.

I checked the dates against my parliamentary schedule, then moved on to constituent matters, correspondence for signature and an urgent memo on Y2K compliance.

Apparently some inbuilt computer glitch was going to cause planes to plummet from the sky and hospital operating theatres to black out at the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1999. This global catastrophe was still more than two years away but meanwhile an incessant stream of paperwork had to be completed, with the usual object of ensuring that nobody could be blamed.

I stared down at the pages of techno-babble, thoughts wandering. I was going to miss Charlie Talbot. He'd been one of the good guys. Spent his life getting us into power, keeping us there when we won it and reminding us why we made the effort.

‘If we don't do it,' he'd say, ‘some other bastards will, and they'll be even worse bastards than us.'

Bastardry, in Charlie's language, was a political attribute, not a personal one. He bore no personal animosity towards his opponents. Not even back in the snake pit of the Trades Hall, back when he was state secretary of the Federated Union of Municipal Employees.

Then, as now, Labor was out of power, state and federal. Whitlam had crashed in a blaze of futile glory and we were back in the wilderness. Blind Freddie could see that we'd be there forever if we didn't get our house in order. Pronto. It was the Reformers versus the Shellbacks. The arena was the union movement and the battle was long and bitter.

Charlie's tolerance must have been sorely tested on quite a few occasions during those decisive tussles. But it was all ancient history now, water over the dam, a mere footnote. The millennium was approaching, bringing new and urgent challenges. I focused on the computer compliance paperwork.

Come the apocalypse, nobody could say it was my fault.

One by one, the afternoon-shift shelf-stackers trickled through the employees' door of the Bi-Lo food barn. When Red appeared, I gave him a bip and a wave. He sauntered over to the car, school backpack slung across his shoulder, shirt-tail hanging out his pants.

‘Good funeral?' Red knew Charlie. Sporadically over the years, Charlie had taken a vaguely avuncular interest to which Red had responded in a vaguely nepotal manner. Gifts had never been exchanged.

‘His best yet.' I started to open my door. ‘Want to drive?'

Red looked around and scanned the scene. ‘Now?'

On quiet Sunday afternoons, Northcote Plaza carpark was a perfect spot for introductory lessons in three-point turns and parallel parking. But this was a midweek evening at the intersection of homebound rush-hour and pre-dinner shopping flurry, dusk blurring the visibility, road courtesy somewhere between endangered and extinct. Out on High Street, the trams were crawling, every stop a stop, the backed-up traffic seething with latent rage.

Red got into the passenger seat. ‘Not worth it,' he said.

‘I thought you wanted some practice.'