Campaign Ruby (25 page)

I had some questions. Why did I shag a journalist? What's the maximum penalty for common assault occasioning bodily harm in Australia? Please can I take a duvet day? But there wasn't time. I gave Maddy the rest of my Redskins, took a raincheck on the explanation and had a lightning-speed shower. In convoy to the airport to catch our Coolangatta-bound flight, we listened to O'Donoghue on the airwaves. He used sentences beginning with ‘back in my day' and ending with ‘not good enough'.

My phone buzzed. It was Luke texting from the car in front.

Missed you at the pub. Sorry for late notice, but I need you to salvage a candidate in Tassie. Get yourself a flight to Launceston. I'll brief you when you get there. L

Excellent
, said my head,
exile is exactly what you need
.

Any chance Launceston is a tropical coastal resort with day spa and daiquiris aplenty? R

No. L

When we reached the airport, Maddy bade me farewell with a hug while I reluctantly booked my flight to what she called Woop Woop.

My phone rang again. Fran.

‘How are you?' I didn't need to ask. She was terrible; I could hear it in her voice.

‘Fine.'

‘No, you're not.'

‘Yes, I am. Why would you think I'm not fine?'

‘You sound very unfine.'

‘Unfine isn't even a word, Ruby. I'm completely fine. Clementine's fine. We're all fine. Everything's fine.'

‘So you rang to tell me you're fine?'

‘No, of course not. I rang to see how you are. You should try it sometime.'

I deserved that. ‘Sorry, things have been really hectic here because we only have a fortnight until the election.' I scanned the lounge for intelligence-gatherers from the fourth estate. I lowered my voice just in case. ‘I've been in Canberra, we've just had the debate, I was on the prep team for it, and there's a particularly good-looking journalist who turned out to be a—'

‘Mark's having an affair.'

‘What?' I was flabbergasted.

‘I mean Mark Gardner, the man I married. The father of my daughter. Your brother-in-law. He is having an affair.' Her news made my articulated lorry feel more like a unicycle.

‘Are you sure?' It seemed a logical question to ask until I got the answer.

‘Yes, I'm sure. We woke up yesterday morning and he told me he's been sleeping with the professional indemnity partner.'

‘Christ.' I urged my body to get over the shock as quickly as possible. ‘What did you say?'

‘I think this is the most distressing part. I said, “Hurry up and get dressed; we're going to be late.”' She heaved hysterically and slurred, ‘“Hurry up and get dressed, we're going to be late.”'

‘Late for what?'

‘The church fete.'

‘Are you drinking?'

‘Yes. Wodka.'

Fran doesn't even like vodka. In fact, she has loathed it since becoming terribly ill on excess flirtinis at a work function, the projectile result of which also put me off the stuff. That and pineapple juice.

‘Good lass,' I encouraged. I needed to be there. There was no way I could do this from a chesterfield in the Qantas Club, Canberra.

‘I don't know what to do, Ruby. Clementine seems oblivious to it, which is good. I can't bring myself to talk to Mark about it and even if I could he's at a jurisprudence conference in Bangladesh.' She swigged at her drink, ice cubes clinking against the side of the glass.

‘This is what you're going to do,' I improvised. ‘You're going to get on a plane with Clem and fly to Melbourne. You need time to digest this and you can't very well do that when you're drinking alone and caring for a five-year-old.'

‘I can't go to Australia,' she wailed. ‘Clementine has school.'

‘She's five, Fran. What important life skill will she miss? Advanced Hopscotch? Communal Hamster Care? Colouring Inside the Lines 101? She's obnoxious enough as it is without superior crayon abilities.'

She laughed and hiccoughed. ‘Where would we stay? What would we do?'

‘Let me call Daphne and Debs. I'll just say Mark is away on business and you're thinking of coming out for a visit. I'm sure they'll put you up at their place in the Yarra Valley. Daphne couldn't be broodier at the moment and Clem will love it—there are puppies.'

‘Will you be there, Ruby?' she asked with heart-wrenching desperation.

Now it was my turn to be the grown-up. ‘I will be there.'

Sailing blind over Cataract Gorge

Woop Woop had the hottest candidate I'd ever seen. Melissa Hatton, who had the kinds of curves that would make Marilyn Monroe weep with envy, picked me up from the airport in her equally va-va-voom emerald vintage Jaguar. She was on the phone and so was Luke, so he couldn't brief me.

‘Thanks, mate, I'll see you at the fundraiser tonight.' Melissa drove under the boom gate at the car park. ‘I really appreciate your support. Yep. Yep. See you there. Bye.'

She turned her head slightly. ‘I sincerely hope you're Roo Stanhope,' she said, holding the parking receipt between her perfect teeth. ‘Otherwise I've just picked up a complete stranger from the airport and someone from Max Masters' office is waiting at the luggage carousel.'

‘I am.'

She smiled. ‘I like to drive and talk so I figured this would be a good opportunity to fill you in.'

I'd like to drive and talk too if I had wheels like hers. The crème-caramel leather interior was almost edible. I ran my fingers along the smooth, glossy wood panelling. ‘She was my dad's pride and joy,' Melissa said, answering my unasked question. ‘He bought her brand new from the dealer in 1987, and got in a bit of strife with Mum when he drove home that day. The stock market had just crashed so a lot of people were doing it tough, but Dad loved this car until the day he died.'

At the traffic lights, Melissa twirled her platinum-blonde hair into a flawless chignon fastened with a tortoise-shell clip, and used the rear-view mirror to apply 1950s pin-up red lipstick to her pronounced pout. ‘So, you're here because everyone reckons I'm going to fuck up.'

It didn't seem to be a question, so there was little point in denying it.

‘The local papers and radios hate me because the current member and even some of the guys on our side are running a shit-sheet campaign against me, saying I only got the gig because of nepotism and sex.

‘It's a very tight margin—about 0.1 per cent with redistribution. That makes my campaign a national media issue so the vultures are feeding on my misfortune.' We whizzed around a corner and across a narrow bridge suspended between two vertiginous rocky cliff faces. ‘If you've got time for a coffee I'll take you somewhere spectacular that looks out over Cataract Gorge.'

‘Sure,' I said, trying not to think about how eerily still the water was below us. ‘Have you done anything to dispel the rumours?'

‘I took all the editors, radio blokes and even a proprietor out to lunch weeks ago. All of them. I answered every question, addressed every rumour in full; but apparently mine is the story of a vixen political princess and that sells, so they publish it.'

‘Where do the rumours come from?' I stuttered, hoping that my question wasn't the Tasmanian equivalent of asking Paris Hilton the secret to her extraordinary internet hit rate. There was something vaguely ironic about sailing blind over Cataract Gorge.

‘Well, for one, some party members who didn't like my old man when he was local member have taken a stand against me. Two, the party pushed through my preselection, making it look like I thought I was entitled to the gig and that I don't respect party processes.' She swung into a parking space out the front of a cafe. ‘And here's the cherry: I'm a hot blonde. People think hot blondes are airheads. So despite my being one of the state's best legal brains, people compare me to my fat and failed used-car salesman of an opponent and think that he's got a better idea about what's best for Donaldson.'

She sashayed inside, towards a secluded table, with the kind of walk that should always be accompanied by the brass section of a big band. ‘Evening, Joyce,' she said to the frost-pink-lipped proprietor.

‘G'day, Missy, what can I get you?' Joyce asked, ignoring the sniggering pair of nose-pierced waitresses clearing the adjacent table.

‘My usual malted milkshake. And you, Roo?'

‘Sounds delicious.'

‘Two, then.' She rolled up the sleeves of her chocolate-brown business shirt.

‘What shits me to tears,' she said when Joyce was out of earshot, ‘is that the party virtually begged me to run in Donaldson. I gave it a lot of thought, of course. I'm a public prosecutor, for fuck's sake—why would I want to throw that in to run for one of the most marginal seats in the country? Frankly, I was holding out for something safe. But I can't very well go and say that on the record, can I?'

I shrugged.

‘Add to that an unfortunate photograph from a cocktail party in the early nineties—I had a fling with a prominent businessman when his divorce wasn't finalised—and Bob's your uncle: you've got a scandal.'

My phone rang. ‘Do you mind if I take this?'

Melissa nodded and I stepped outside.

‘Sorry I couldn't take your call earlier,' Luke said. ‘Things have been frantic up here with this rail announcement. How's Donaldson?'

‘A bit grim, to be honest. I've just had a chat with Melissa Hatton.' I checked she was still inside and whispered, ‘She seems oblivious to the intimidating image she's built for herself.'

‘Doesn't surprise me. Our polling is terrible in Donaldson and it's a key seat. She needs to pick up her game. Do you think it's salvageable?'

‘I think you're better placed than I am to answer that.'

‘Come off it, Roo. Tell me what you think.'

‘Okay, in all my weeks in politics I've never met a woman so loathsome to other women. Even in this cafe, the waitresses can't stop whispering about her.'

‘So what do you think she should do?'

Don't ask me.

My gut took over. ‘She needs an image overhaul, she needs the local party to unite behind her and she needs to give newspapers here something good to say about her.'

‘Sounds about right. Why don't you come up with a strategy and we can talk it through on the phone if you like. I reckon you should stay down there for a few days and work with her team. Take as long as you need.'

Her?

‘Me?'

‘Gotta go. Keep in touch.'

I went back inside just as Joyce arrived with two old-fashioned stainless-steel beakers with frothy heads and curly pink straws. It was grossly unjust that this woman could drink litres of blitzed ice-cream, confected chocolate syrup and full-fat milk and still wind up looking like Rita Hayworth as Gilda.

‘Can I be brutally honest, Melissa?' I took an enormous swig of aerated sweetness to give me strength.

‘Go ahead.'

‘You're in danger of losing this election because you're perfect.'

‘Come again?'

‘I mean look at you. They think you have it all. You're drop dead gorgeous. You have an incredibly successful career. You drive the sexiest car in Launceston. You're from a privileged background. People simply don't feel they can relate to you.' She took the first few as compliments and the last as a stiletto through the Achilles, but I stuck with it regardless. ‘This isn't your fault, but it is your problem. The question is: how do we fix it in two weeks so that you can become the next member for Donaldson?'

The remaining droplets of her milkshake looped the loop of her straw. ‘I know what the question is. What's the bloody answer?'

‘Off the top of my head, I think it goes something like this. Firstly, we need to counter the perception that you didn't fight for preselection. The party dragged you into this mess; they need to be saying publicly that they approached you to run for Donaldson on your merits.

‘Secondly, we need a national figure who will attest to your intelligence. Someone intellectually weighty and preferably ugly. Maybe a retired judge, an academic or some sort of colleague. You probably have scores of case examples where you have put notorious criminals behind bars.

‘Thirdly, and this will be our Everest, we need to get women behind you. You need to be approachable, not formidable. Dial down the make-up, stick with suits and help at a school canteen somewhere. Host a function for female small-business owners. Go to a nursing home and play cards with old ladies. Let everyone else paint you as bright and successful while you're busy bringing yourself back down to earth.'

She sighed. ‘You seem an intelligent woman and an attractive one at that, Roo. How can you ask me to change the way I look in order to appeal to other women? It's so bloody counterproductive to the cause.'

‘Melissa, with respect, they haven't sent me down here to reform the Tasmanian sisterhood; otherwise, I'd agree with you one hundred per cent. They sent me here because you need to win the hearts and minds of Donaldson and you have two and a half weeks in which to do it. You're not going to get there by lecturing your own sex on how they
should
respond to a woman like you. They already despise you, so playing the vampy victim isn't going to cut it. Take a look at those two in the corner.' I gestured over my right shoulder to the whispering waitresses. ‘They bitch and they vote.'

She sighed. ‘Where do we start?'

The following Saturday, in a demure navy-blue pant suit and low ponytail, Melissa Hatton was asking people at the Donaldson Secondary College fete whether they wanted their burgers with beetroot or without. Since the start of the week she'd had her face painted as Spider-Man at Tazzie Devils Childcare, joined in at the bingo hall for Ladies' Day and lent her green fingers to the rose bushes at the RSL. Best of all, she was having a ball, which was evident in the colourful images published in the local press.