Underground Read Free Page A

the faithful familial booster, on those occasions when reporters sought me out during election campaigns and the like. He was my meal ticket, after all. And in return, Bernard turned a blind eye to the more questionable activities of mine that traded on our relationship. It was, in the best political tradition, a win–win thing. Or so
I
thought. But I was never glad to hear from him.
    I said, ‘How’d you know I was around?’
    ‘How could I not know?’ he replied, coldly. ‘You and the Fijians have been thrown out of half the bars in town today.’
    ‘But how’d you know I’m here at Rydges?’
    ‘You always stay at Rydges.’
    Well, Canberra was a small city, so he might’ve been telling the truth. My own suspicion was that he had ASIO keeping tabs on me, but I was too drunk to argue.
    I said, ‘You gonna give those guys their aid package?’
    He ignored the question. ‘I want you to come to The Lodge for dinner.’
    ‘No thanks. I’ve eaten.’
    ‘Not since lunch, I’m told.’
    ‘I’m not hungry,’ I insisted, watching the room spin before my eyes.
    ‘There’s a car waiting for you, outside the lobby.’
    ‘Why? What’s so important?’
    He had hung up, the little prick.
    (By the way, I reserve the right to insert ‘little’ before any term of abuse that I throw at him in the following pages. I don’t mean ‘little’ in terms of ‘short’, because he isn’t. I mean it because he’s my ‘little’ brother. I was born fifteen minutes earlier. And resent it though he does, there’s nothing the little shit can do about it.)
    But I made my way to the lobby, all the same. You don’t refuse a call from the country’s leader simply on a drunkenwhim, family or not. And besides, it would only impress my backers all the more if I could say (honestly, for once) that I’d dined with the PM just the night before.
    The car was waiting as promised, a government limousine. The driver was expecting me, and we whiffed off into the Canberra night. It wasn’t far, just over the lake and then around the parliamentary circle and up Adelaide Avenue to the front gates of The Lodge. Security men peered hard through the windows, and demanded my wallet for identification—as if they didn’t know who I was. Then they looked underneath the car for bombs, and in the boot too, and finally waved us on. More security waited for me at the front door, with a pat-down for weapons, and scans by metal detectors, and anthrax detectors, and lord knows what else, and at last, cleared of everything, I was ushered through to the inner sanctum.
    Of course, Bernard would not have been in Canberra, yet alone in residence at The Lodge, if it wasn’t the middle of a parliamentary session. He hated the house, just as, everyone knew, he hated the whole city. He preferred (like many a PM before him) the much grander vistas of Kirribilli House, on the harbour in Sydney. But there he was, waiting for me in the study, very much the Prime Minister after hours, his coat and tie removed, and his sleeves rolled up. Not that this made him look relaxed at all, or casual. He was a man born to wear suits. So bland and nondescript a figure that he might have been a low-grade bookkeeper, not the most powerful man in Australia. He isn’t exactly ugly, I suppose. But to me he’s always had one of those gloomy, stubborn faces. An aggrieved face. A bully’s face. A reflection, in other words, of all that lies in his heart.
    I’ve always been thankful, therefore, that we aren’t identical twins. And in our younger days, I was the better looking, no question. Taller, sharper, more hair, more friends, more girls, and far, far more sex. I wouldn’t claim any of that to be true in later years—except maybe the sex, for Bernard was never awomaniser. But I haven’t aged well, what with my indulgent lifestyle. My brother has always been more careful about his health, in that deadly dull way of his, and has no vices that I know of. Plus, by the time