The Brush-Off (5 page)

‘Shit,' said Agnelli. ‘My cheque account pays more.'

‘The money could definitely be working harder,' agreed the other man, businesslike now. ‘Managed properly, 20 per cent or higher isn't out of the question. That's another $50,000 a year, straight up. And no favours required.'

The intercom buzzed. ‘Premier's Department on line one,' squawked Trish's voice. ‘About the swearing-in of the new Cabinet. And Murray has just arrived.'

At the sound of my name, I scurried back into my own office and lit another cigarette.

Agnelli was heading straight into the kind of troubled waters he paid me to steer him away from. Why hadn't he discussed his foray into fund-raising with me first? And who was this guy in his office? Knowing exactly who Agnelli was talking to, about what, and why, was what I got paid for. At least it had been, I reminded myself. Angelo's problems were not necessarily mine any more.

Sitting behind my artificial-woodgrain desk, gazing between my shoes into the reception area, I tried to concentrate on my own immediate predicament. What I needed was a bit of instant expertise. Just enough to make Angelo think I might still be of some use, despite the changed circumstances. A couple of tantalising scraps of inside info on the Amalgamated Tap Turners and Dam Builders Union could go a long way. I opened my teledex and started scanning, hunting for a contact who could provide a crash course in the finer points of H20.

At that moment, Agnelli's door opened and Duncan Keogh strutted out, a pocket battleship in an open-necked sport shirt that strained at the thrust of his barrel chest. The shirt had a design like a test pattern and looked like Duncan had bought it at one of those menswear shops with a rack outside on the footpath. Any two shirts for $49.95 plus a free pair of pants. He was probably under the impression that he'd got a bargain. Not for the first time, I thought that maybe the Australian Labor Party should consider instituting a dress code.

Close on Keogh's heels came a man who didn't need any fashion advice. His lightweight summer suit was so well tailored it made Keogh's clothes look like he was wearing them for a bet. He could have been anywhere between his late forties and his early sixties, depending on the mileage, and he had the self-assured air of a man who didn't muck around. What he didn't muck around doing wasn't immediately apparent, but he'd made a success of it, whatever it was. His tie was red silk and so was his pocket handkerchief. He was fit, well-lunched and towered over Keogh like a gentleman farmer walking a Jack Russell terrier on a short leash.

He was laughing at something Keogh was saying, but only with his mouth. His eyes, up there where Duncan couldn't see them, were saying dickhead. Whoever he was, I liked him. He looked like he'd be a handy man to have on a lifeboat. While the others were singing ‘Abide With Me', he'd slip you his hip flask of Black Label. He and Dunc went into the lift, doing the doings.

‘Who was that?'

Trish, standing at the shredder, pretended she couldn't hear me, giving nothing away until she knew whether I was in or I was out. Jerking her head in the direction of Agnelli's door, she gave me leave to enter.

The great panjandrum's inner sanctum was as dark as a hibernating bear's cave. The air conditioning was on high and the heavy drapes were drawn against the glare of the day and the wandering gaze of the clerical staff in the Ministry for Industry and Technology next door. Through the cool gloom I could just make out the shape of Agnelli himself, a ghostly presence in shirt sleeves etched against the cluster of framed awards and diplomas on the wall behind his desk. Seeing him there like that—surrounded by his Order of the Pan Pontian Brotherhood, his Honorary Master of Arts from the University of Valetta, the little model donkey cart presented with gratitude by the Reggio di Calabria Social Club—made my heart go out to him. Three years at the epicentre of political power and his office looked like a proctologist's consulting rooms.

His back was turned and he was reaching up to unhook one of the framed certificates. His University of Melbourne law degree. He studied it for a moment, then laid it carefully in an empty grocery carton sitting on his desk. Across the room I could read the box's yellow lettering. Golden Circle Pineapple, it said. This Way Up.

Shivering at the sudden drop in temperature, I stepped forward. Agnelli turned to face me. ‘You heard?'

I nodded. ‘Water Supply and the Arts.' I showed him my palms. Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

Angelo indicated I should sit at the conference table, then crossed to the drapes and tugged them half-open. Harsh daylight swept away the conspiratorial shade. He got a couple of cans of beer out of his bar fridge, kicked his shoes off and sat down opposite me. So, he seemed to be saying. Here we are. Two men who know what's what. He slid me one of the cans—my poison chalice, I took it. And so it was, as it turned out. But not in the way I thought at the time.

He shrugged. ‘I won't say I'm not disappointed.'

Power had improved Ange, the way a couple of drinks do to some people. It had smoothed down his more abrasive anxieties, made him more mellow, less in need of having constantly to assert himself. But his forties were well upon him, and he could no longer pass for a child wonder. His smooth black hair still came up well in print, and his cheeks still bulged with chipmunk amiability, but the good fairy of middling high office had scattered ashes at his temples and given him slightly more chins than were absolutely necessary. His heart remained where it had always been, though. Marginally to the left of centre, and closer to his stomach than his brain.

‘This will mean some changes, of course,' he said.

I popped the tab off my can and waited for the bullet. Agnelli's gaze loitered in midair, among the dust motes playing in the beams of sunlight, as though they might offer him the right form of words.

‘Tell me, Murray,' he said, at long last. ‘What are the Arts?'

This was very disheartening. Why go through the pretence of having me fail the job interview? I sucked on my can. Bitter, beer, but fortifying.

Agnelli's question, it turned out, was entirely rhetorical. He didn't want my opinion. He wanted an audience. The axe was too brutal. There must needs first be a little armchair philosophising. A deep and meaningful on the complexities inherent in public intervention in the cultural sector.

‘Let me bounce this off you,' he said. A little bouncing before the big bounce. ‘The Arts are the measure of how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. A resource to be developed, an economic as well as a social asset. When I hear the word culture I think excellence and I think access…'

I wasn't sure where this was going, but at least he wasn't reaching for his revolver. ‘Not bad,' I shrugged. ‘Bit vague.'

‘Then you'd better sharpen it up for me,' he said.

‘You want me at Arts?' I must have sounded a little incredulous.

‘If you don't mind.' Ange had a way of making you feel like it was your decision, even if he was making it. ‘For the time being. Until things settle down.'

‘And then?'

‘And then we'll see.' No doubt we would. If, he was making it clear, I didn't botch it.

So, here I was, my fortunes again leg-roped to Angelo Agnelli. Less than a minute before, I'd been merely apprehensive about my future. Now I had real cause for concern. ‘I'll line up a departmental briefing, then,' I said, by way of acceptance.

‘Fine.' Ange tossed his can at the waste basket, scored. ‘You know Lloyd Eastlake?'

I shook my head. ‘Should I?'

‘He chairs the Cultural Affairs Policy Committee.' In theory, policy committees shaped the party platform and guarded it from the expediency of ministers. In practice, they were ineffectual talking-shops and magnets for inconsequential schemers. That did not mean, however, that due lip-service did not need to be paid. ‘Bit of a mover, from all reports,' Agnelli said. ‘Well connected in the unions. Not factionally aligned. Seen quite a few arts ministers come and go.' That wouldn't have been hard. The arts ministry changed hands more frequently than a concert pianist with the crabs.

‘There's some sort of art gallery thing he's invited me to this evening. The Centre for Modern Art.' The policy committee chairman wasn't wasting any time cosying up to the new minister. ‘Reckons it could be a good opportunity to start developing links with the cultural community.'

‘Could be,' I agreed tentatively. No skin off my nose what Agnelli did with his Friday nights.

‘I told him I couldn't make it, got a family function it's more than my life's worth to miss.' In other words, he planned to spend the evening on the phone, doing his factional arithmetic, figuring out where his esteem in the eyes of the Premier had turned to water. ‘I told him you'd represent me. Standard booze and schmooze, you know the drill. He'll pick you up in front of the National Gallery at 6.30.'

Luckily, Red's deferred arrival meant I had a free evening. Not that disrupting my personal arrangements had ever unduly concerned Agnelli. ‘This Eastlake and I don't know each other from a bar of soap. Do I wear a white carnation and carry a furled umbrella, or what?'

‘I told him to look for someone who can't believe he's still got a job.'

I backed off, not complaining. Stroking the relevant policy committee chair was one of a ministerial adviser's chief chores, after all. And the Centre for Modern Art, whatever that was, had to be a step up from the Maltese Senior Citizens' Association annual dinner-dance, the sort of delegated duty that normally occupied my Friday and Saturday nights.

‘Anything else I should be aware of ?' I was steering him towards the conversation I had just overheard.

‘Matter of fact, there is.' Agnelli ambled back to his desk and resumed his packing. ‘See if you can't get me some tickets for
Don Giovanni
. You have heard of
Don Giovanni
, haven't you?'

‘Shit, yeah,' I said. ‘Big in the concrete business, isn't he?'

‘It's a small portfolio, Murray,' said Agnelli, signalling that our interview was at an end. ‘Let's not make a meal of it.'

I drained my beer and beat a path to the door, grateful for small mercies. I might not yet have Agnelli's confidence on this fund-raising caper, but at least I was still in work. My fist was closing on the door handle when something crossed Agnelli's mind. ‘Lots of rich you-know-whats involved in the arts, aren't there?'

What was that supposed to mean? ‘I've heard rumours,' I said. ‘Would you like it covered in the briefing?'

Agnelli turned back to his packing. ‘Piss off,' he said, not entirely without wit.

I did, too. I immediately rang the Arts Ministry to confirm that the director was in, stuffed a couple of taxi vouchers in my pocket and went downstairs to Victoria Parade. The Charade could stay where it was until I'd scouted the parking situation at Arts. Besides which, I'd probably be offered a drink or two at this modern art joint. No point in risking the prospect of being invited to blow into a little bag on the way home. A Silver Top cab arrived. ‘Hut,' said the driver, a wizened Ethiopian. ‘Very hut.'

The city centre swarmed with schoolkids making the most of the dying days of their summer vacation. We skirted the soaring steel skeleton of the half-completed Karlcraft Centre and crossed the Yarra, glassy beer-bottle brown under the baked enamel sky, and found another Parisian boulevard, St Kilda Road. On one side it was bounded by the expansive parkland of the Domain, on the other by the brutalist boxes of the Arts Centre, squatting on the bank opposite Flinders Street railway station like a gun emplacement guarding the strategic approaches of the town.

Once upon a time, the riverside had been a jumble of run-down warehouses and obsolete factories, an eyesore enlivened only at night when a huge neon sweet unwrapped itself over and over again in a blaze of coloured lights. But the electric lolly was long gone, replaced by Arts City. Here—in the National Gallery, the Concert Hall, the State Theatre, the Ballet Centre—the blue-collar Labor constituencies to the north and west of the city paid for the Liberal voters of the leafy eastern suburbs to have their self-esteem massaged.

Not, I thought, the proper attitude to be taking. Think centre of excellence, I told myself. Think vibrant treasure house of national identity. Think better than unemployment.

Behind the National Gallery, even newer cultural edifices were rising from bulldozed construction sites. A new HQ for the symphony orchestra, studios for the ABC, a resplendent cultural precinct rising from the flattened ruins of ancient industry. Soon, according to the architects' models, little stick figures would sip cappuccinos here under little stick umbrellas before ambling into the Concert Hall to soak up a bit of moral improvement. Of the uncouth past, only the mouldering 1920s edifice of the old YMCA survived, crouching behind the Concert Hall as if it hoped to dodge the wrecker's ball.

Haile Selassie deposited me in front of the National Gallery and I headed straight for the moat. Its shallow ornamental pools flanked the entrance forecourt, separated from the footpath by a low wall of square-cut stone. Originally intended to mirror the building's blank facade, its austere lines were now a little cluttered with an embarrassment of artistic riches. First had come a trio of dancing water fountains. Then an iron and polypropylene sculpture modelled either on the inner workings of a spring-scale or a trash-can fish skeleton from a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Then a gravity-fed spiral based on the anatomy of a mollusc. Finally, an enormous ceramic creature, a kind of bifurcated llama that straddled the water like an aquatic mutation of Dr Doolittle's pushmi-pullyu.