Peter Corris: Man In The Shadows

‘You want her back?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s fantastic with her when it’s good. Unbelievable. Then these things come up and it’s hell. I don’t know.’

‘Have you tried to talk to her about the letter?’

‘She hangs up. I tried to catch her in at the News. She went into the women’s dunny. I waited, then I went in. She’d left by another door. Look, I’m not only worried about the flak. That letter’s dangerous. The big noise is… ‘

I held up my hand. ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Let me think.’

I’d known Byron and Pauline Kelly for eight years. For most of that time they’d been married, that is, all except a few months at the beginning and the last few weeks since they separated. They fought. At the beginning they were known as Rocky II; that was before the movie came out. Since then they’ve been Rocky III, IV, as the movies caught up with them. They’d called it off several times but the current separation looked final. Rocky V, at least their version, seemed unlikely.

Byron was Michael Parsons’ political adviser cum press secretary cum bodyguard cum drinking companion. Parsons was rising fast in the state political zoo. He was currently a Minister but I wasn’t quite certain what for.

Pauline was a journalist, an in-demand freelance who appeared in print, on radio and on television. Byron was a pragmatist, Pauline an idealist; they agreed on almost nothing but the superiority of red wine over white. Pauline had once told me why they stayed together.

‘Because of King Arthur.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘We come a lot.’

Pauline was a small woman, blonde, untidy and energetic. I liked her. Byron was a foot taller, more careful of his appearance but somehow always in her shadow. I liked him too so it pained me to see him looking strained and underslept. ‘How come you kept this letter?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you get rid of it when your boss was sober?’

‘You don’t understand what it’s like working for these blokes. Pauline didn’t understand either. They’re like… shit, I don’t know. Have you ever been to a really even fight, where the fighters slugged it out all night and finished up square?’

‘Sure. Rose and Famechon.’

Kelly scratched his head. ‘They never fought.’

‘That’s what it would’ve been like if they had.’

‘Okay. Well, these politicians get off a lot of shots; they torpedo people and humiliate them but they’re sitting ducks themselves. Real targets. If they make the wrong move at the wrong time, they’re history.’

‘My heart bleeds all over their superannuation cheques.’

‘You sound like Pauline. I find it sort of exciting. Parsons’s not a bad bloke. Compared to the guy on the other side he’s a genius and a saint rolled into one, but he’s got his faults. He gets pissed at a certain pressure level. I kept the letter to scare him, to show him what political suicide looks like. I didn’t get around to doing that. I showed it to Pauline when we were having one of our blues and… that’s it.’

‘Does Parsons know the letter’s floating around?’

‘Christ no!’

‘Why me, Byron?’

‘You like Pauline. Not everybody does. She likes you and… ‘

‘Not everybody does,’ I said.

Byron grinned. ‘You’d know. Look, Cliff, I have to play this close to the chest. Almost everybody I know has a word processor. They write everything clown. They’re all keeping diaries, for Christ’s sake. It needs… discretion.’

‘She’ll know I’ve talked to you. She might be hard to catch up with.’

‘Right.’

‘A hundred and fifty a day and expenses.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Discretion guaranteed.’

Kelly grimaced and put on his very good American accent, a legacy of his time at UCLA. ‘You got it.’

After he left I spent a few minutes thinking about how unwise it was to get involved in a separated couple tangle. Certain disaster, bound to lose one friend if not two. But business was business, angry men exaggerate and Pauline might have calmed down. I gave myself enough reasons to pick up the phone and ring the house in Willoughby where I assumed Pauline was still living.

The voice in the answering machine was breathy and cigarette-choked: ‘This is Pauline Lyons. I’m out at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you. If it’s Byron Kelly calling or anyone connected with him… don’t bother!’

A challenge. I said: ‘Pauline, it’s Cliff Hardy. I want to talk to you. Please ring me-you know the numbers.’

I hung up and waited. The call came through in about as long as it must have taken her to ring my home number before the office one.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Aha, you leave your machine on broadcast and listen to the messages.’

‘Who doesn’t? What’s on your mind, Cliff? If you want a fuck I might be interested. In fact that’s the only reason I’m talking to you.’

‘At least you’re talking.’

‘Make it quick, I’m on my way out.’

‘I want Michael Parsons’ letter.’

‘Shit, that again. I don’t know anything about it. I barely glanced at it. I was too pissed to take any notice. I told Byron a hundred times.’

‘He’s worried about you, he… ‘

‘Bullshit!’

‘How about the fuck then?’

‘I think I’ll wait for someone keener.’ She hung up hard.

It isn’t that Pauline tells lies exactly, it’s just that she regards journalism as one of the highest callings and the freedom of the press as a sacred human right. She’d say Joh Bjelke-Petersen made sense if she had to in defence of her trade. I’ve met people like her before-stiff-necked lilywhites. There’s only two ways to go-front up and convince them that what you want is really best for them, or sneak behind their backs and steal it.

I used a credit card to buy a tank of petrol because I don’t like to carry that much cash and drove out to Willoughby. The house was a medium-sized, middle-aged timber and glass job that was usually as messy as a garden shed. Byron and Pauline used to say that the dullness of Willoughby was just what they needed after the excitements of politics and journalism.

I was there within half an hour of the phone call. For a top flight journalist Pauline was incredibly disorganised. I judged that ‘now’ meant in ten minutes, ‘soon’ meant half an hour and ‘on my way’ could mean almost anything. I parked down the street, listened to a news broadcast. Another body had turned up, naked, dead for some time and as yet unidentified. The report linked the two deaths through the police statement that the men were ‘well nourished’. To be thin was getting healthier all the time.

Pauline’s Gemini backed out of the drive and roared off in the direction of the city.

In a two-income belt nothing stirs in the early afternoon. The Kellys have a German Shepherd named Gough who looks as if he’d tear your throat out but is as gentle as a lamb if you know him. I opened the front gate and walked towards the house on an overgrown pebble path; Gough loped up to greet me.

I patted his head. ‘Hello, Gough,’ I said. ‘Nothing will save the Governor-General.’ He growled amiably and watched me squint in the gloom of the heavily tree-shaded porch as I picked the lock of the front door.

Byron’s departure had brought changes in the house-some books and pictures were missing, the furniture was extensively rearranged and the small room that had served as his study was empty. Pauline had worked in the room that also served as a spare bedroom. It was chaotic as usual, with books and papers spilling everywhere, brimming ashtrays, sticky glasses and coffee cups, half-eaten sandwiches, forgotten biscuits.