Campaign Ruby (19 page)

‘Brennan will be spewing blood,' said Di with a grin.

Apparently this was a good thing.

‘You done?' asked the cab driver. He cranked up the volume on ‘No Woman, No Cry', which carried us all the way to Tullamarine—my fourth time there in eight days.

In the Qantas Club, over more than our fair share of a passionfruity sauvignon blanc, Di explained why we were on the road again.

‘Essentially, our candidate for Rafter in western Queensland is a bit nuts. The party's been in such a rush to preselect candidates that due diligence has been a little less diligent than we would have liked.' Di chowed down on a stash of over-sauced party pies. ‘This lady's a blogger. She blogs under a nom de plume so a Google search won't bring it up, but it would appear that'— she paused and lowered her voice—‘it would appear that she plots the landing patterns of extraterrestrials from Saturn.'

‘That's more than a bit nuts,' said Maddy. ‘That's about eight Iced VoVos short of a packet.'

‘Two questions,' I said. ‘One, isn't Saturn a gaseous planet? And two, what on earth is an Iced Volvo?'

‘VoVo,' howled Maddy, ‘not Volvo.'

I was still blank.

‘It's a biscuit—pale pink icing with a landing strip of jam sprinkled with desiccated coconut.'

‘Sounds foul.'

‘Don't knock it 'til you try it,' said Di through a mouthful of pie.

‘I did find some delicious sweets in a supermarket the other day,' I offered. ‘They're like English toffees covered in chocolate and wrapped in blue paper printed with tidbits of trivia on film stars. I got Brad Pitt. Very chewy and quite more-ish.'

Maddy and Di looked at each other as they laughed, their eyes watering. It was a sort of contagious hysteria.

‘You mean Fantales?' Maddy clutched her sides as fat tears rolled down her face.

‘Yes.' I was somewhat bewildered. ‘You know them?' I found the half-eaten packet in my overnight bag and put it on the table.

We giggled like teenagers at a sleepover and the lounge staff frowned as we polished off the Fantales, the mini pies and every last drop of the sauvignon blanc.

When they called our flight, I was still under the impression we were headed for Australia's Brick Lane.

Felicia Lunardi

I opened the vertical blinds in my room at the motor inn to the hum of an over-exerted air-conditioner.

Perhaps that's why it's called Cloncurry, I thought, peering through the window at garam masala–coloured dust outside. Trying to ignore my spectacular white wine hangover, I stepped into my pencil skirt for the third time that week, threw on my cleanest top and went outside to find the girls.

It was then that I discovered the etymology of the name: it's called Cloncurry because it's scaldingly hot. Not Melbourne-hot or even Brisbane-hot; Cloncurry brings something unique to heat. Discarded gum trodden into the footpath formed a gooey puddle rather than the usual sticky clump. A squashed marsupial on the road was steaming as if in a tagine. Each of my thighs had suction-cupped the other and my shoes gripped the concrete like velcro. It was a rancid heat. I wondered whether the Cloncurry Embroiderers' Guild met in the morgue for an environment more conducive to fine needlework.

‘Shut it!' commanded Di as I slid open the glass door to an icy shed marked Air -conditioned Dining Room . She was leaning on the water cooler, gulping from a pint glass, reading the Sunday papers. Maddy sat at a laminex table tucking into what looked like, but couldn't possibly have been, a bowl of porridge.

‘Morning, Roo,' she chirped. ‘Grab some breakfast. It's delicious with banana and brown sugar.'

Di and I exchanged glances. ‘Maddy, sweetheart,' I implored, ‘it's about two hundred degrees outside; why in God's name are you eating hot porridge?'

‘I'm from Mount Isa,' said Maddy, pointing near the westernmost point on the map of Queensland hand-stitched into her placemat.

‘So, what's on the agenda?' I asked.

Di poured some water onto her chest and fanned it dry with a newspaper. ‘We have to go to the candidate's place for a chat.'

‘Can't she come here?' I asked, standing directly beneath the air-conditioning vent.

Di shook her head. ‘Today's her campaign launch and a gaggle of journos are arriving later this arvo because Mick O'Donoghue is launching it.'

‘Who's that?'

‘He was the most recent PM on our side—Patton defeated him over a decade ago, but he was hugely popular and people still love him. He's from this part of the world.'

‘How are the papers?'

‘Reasonable,' said Di, throwing me a copy of the
Sunday
. ‘We managed to take the sting out of Slaughtergate and the Patton thing has helped us, but they've still got shots of the victim's family, the officer involved and Max in his tracky dacks.'

‘I'll bring the car around front for you two wusses— we'll leave at a quarter to ten.' Maddy scraped at oats cemented to the bottom of her bowl.

‘Wusses?'

‘People who don't enjoy being microwaved,' explained Di.

There's a word for everything in this country.

‘Oh, and Roo, you might want to get changed.'

She was right. I was already drenched and had walked all of eight feet between my room and the dining shed. There was nothing else clean in my overnight bag, so I battled across the road—which was like walking against the flow of a giant hair dryer—to Carl's Camping Gear.

‘G'day,' said a leathery man in his mid-sixties. ‘What can I do you for?'

‘Hello,' I said, wishing I could say ‘g'day' without it sounding so much like ‘giddy'. ‘Listen, I need something a bit cooler.'

He looked me up and down. ‘Thongs.' He disappeared behind his counter.

‘I beg your pardon?' I steeled myself to slap him before he popped up with a pair of flip-flops bearing the Australian flag. ‘They're magnificent,' I said, stepping out of my melting pumps onto the union jack and southern cross.

‘Now, we don't have much by way of ladies wear, but I do have some shirts.' He presented me with a pile of plastic-wrapped T-shirts, including a canary-yellow vest with XXXX Queensland Australia emblazoned on it in red block letters.

‘Is this supposed to be some sort of pornographic reference?'

‘That's Fourex,' he belly laughed.

I was still blank.

‘Beer. You tourists crack me up.'

I emerged from his shop wearing a billowing yellow XXXX vest as a belted mini dress, aviator sunglasses and by far the most comfortable pair of shoes I'd ever owned. It wasn't my most flattering ensemble, particularly as the yellow didn't do much for my deathly pale skin tone, but I couldn't have cared less. As I approached the hire car, Maddy honked the horn and Di managed to wolf-whistle through her raucous laughter as she photographed me with her BlackBerry.

‘Oh yes,' I said, ‘mock the tourist.'

‘You spaz,' said Maddy. ‘There's a clothes shop just around the corner!'

Spaz?

She connected her iPod to the car and put on some Dixie Chicks.

‘So, how far away is this property?' I asked Maddy once we were on the road.

‘About ninety minutes south of here, give or take a few.'

‘Won't we be in New South Wales by then?'

‘Not even close, sweet girl. This great state has almost two million square kilometres.'

‘In miles?'

‘Dunno,' said Di, holding her phone to the sky to find a signal, ‘but the UK is about a quarter of a million.'

‘The seat of Rafter alone is bigger than the UK,' said Maddy.

It was unfathomable. ‘What's this candidate's name?'

‘Felicia Lunardi,' said a straight-faced Di. ‘I shit you not.'

An unfortunate name for someone about to face national ridicule for spotting aliens in western Queensland, I thought, before allowing the highway to rock me to sleep.

‘Roo,' said Maddy, stirring me, ‘we're almost there.'

It was just past eleven, and even with the air-conditioning at sixteen degrees, the car windows were hot to the touch. We pulled over at a large homestead where a tall, muscular woman in a long denim skirt and collared shirt came to welcome us with a sideways wave which I later realised was not a local greeting but a routine fly-clearing motion.

‘You're from Max Masters' office?'

‘That's us,' said Di, with two tiny flies above her lip. ‘I'm Di, and these are my colleagues Maddy and Roo.'

I'd already danced the dirt drive towards her shaded verandah to escape the heat and hundreds of flies that seemed to be using my back as an insect airport.

‘Don't mind Roo,' said Maddy, ‘she's a Brit.'

‘Very pleased to meet you all,' she said, staring at my mini-dress. ‘I'm Felicia, but everyone calls me Flick. Con's just made some pikelets and a jug of cordial, so why don't you come inside and have some morning tea.'

We followed her into a huge country kitchen where a mustachioed man in an apron was spooning jam and cream onto perfectly formed drop scones. ‘My husband, Con,' said Flick. ‘Con, meet Di, Maddy and Roo.'

‘Sit down and tuck in while the pikelets are still warm,' he said. The table was cluttered with piles of FLICK LUNARDI FOR RAFTER paraphernalia.

‘Sorry for the mess,' said Con. ‘We're in the middle of folding and stuffing postal vote information.'

‘Now,' said Flick, pouring us each a glass of orange squash, ‘what are you all doing here?'

Di took the floor. ‘The thing is, the party found your blog.'

‘So what?' said Flick. Con hung his head.

‘Well, it's a little…unconventional,' Di said gently. ‘The other side knows about it so it's only a matter of time before it's public knowledge.'

‘Let me get this straight,' said Flick, raising her voice. ‘You guys came all the way out here because you've seen a blog linked to my campaign office IP address about other life out there. You think I'm a fruitloop.'

That's it in a nutshell
, said my head.

‘Yes,' said Di.

Flick rocked back on a sturdy chair. ‘I'm the first proper local candidate the party has had out here for years. We're working our bums off trying to improve this margin, with little or no help from you lot, and now you come up here to tell me I mightn't be good enough for this seat?'

Di appeared unfazed.

‘Let me tell you something, flossy,' thundered Flick. ‘The people who will go to the ballot box in this electorate know who I am. They don't give a shit about Max Masters and Gabrielle Brennan—they want to send a local to Canberra. I've worked too bloody hard on this campaign, driving and sometimes flying tens of thousands of kilometres for a cup of tea, waiting weeks for a new photocopier, running a federal election campaign from a bloody dial-up modem—'

‘Tell 'em, darl,' interrupted Con.

She looked at him intently.

‘It's okay,' he said. ‘You tell 'em or I will.'

She shook her head.

‘It's my blog,' said Con.

‘Don't, love,' said Flick. ‘You don't have to do this.'

‘Yes, I do, sweetheart.' He turned to us. ‘It's my blog— Flick's covering for me.'

Di sighed, relieved.

‘I've taken long service leave from the mine to work on the campaign,' Con explained. ‘Sometimes when we're at the campaign office I use the internet there. Rings of Love is my username.'

‘Would you be willing to say that on the record?'

‘No, he would not,' said Flick.

‘Sure,' said Con.

I took the last bite of my third delicious drop scone.

‘Why don't we meet you at the launch,' said Di. ‘Call me when you've made a decision about how you want to handle this.'

The function room at the weatherboard pub smelled like beer, salt, chalk and air-conditioning, with a hint of nicotine still lingering from before the ban. Three coin-operated billiards tables had been pushed aside to make room for the campaign launch. Maddy and I unstacked a tower of plastic orange chairs and tested the microphone while Di briefed Mick O'Donoghue. He had arrived half an hour before the launch. ‘It's been an absolute bloody stinker today, hasn't it?' said the tanned octogenarian in an almost indecipherable Australian accent. ‘Dry as a dead dingo's donger.'

‘Donger?' I whispered to Maddy. She laughed.

‘Silly bugger,' said Mick, when Di told him about Con's sightings. ‘Imagine if I'd gone blurting out all my thoughts on a public noticeboard in my day. So, what's the game plan?'

‘There's a whole bunch of gallery who have turned up to hear you speak,' said Di. ‘The sitting member has been backgrounding on the blog, which for all they know is Flick's. I've drawn up a few lines for you to look over in case you're asked about it.'

He spotted his reflection in a framed photograph of Her Majesty circa 1976 and licked three wrinkly brown fingers to smooth down his remaining silver hair. If I hadn't seen him do that, I'd have let him borrow the comb in my Toolkit.

‘Which journos are coming?'

‘All the local press,' said Di. ‘The
Queenslander
, a junior bloke from the
Herald
and one of the TV guys who's been travelling with the national campaign.'

‘Who?'

‘I don't know if you'll know him,' said Di. ‘His name's Oscar Franklin.'

My tower of chairs toppled and crashed.

The former prime minister stared at me. ‘Oscar,' he said, ‘the looker.'

‘I need to go to the motel and change before the launch,' I told Maddy.

‘They're about to arrive. There's no time.'

‘I can't let anyone see me like this. It'd be unprofessional.'