Shane Maloney: The Brush-Off

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.