Vera (24 page)

Leith has become increasingly passionate in his responses. It's as if he's on trial again, as if he must convince me (me!) of his innocence. There is such tension in his body. Such tension in mine, too. If the penalty for remaining in the prison after five were to be hanged beside Leith, I could scarcely be sicker, or more panicky. I want to leap to my feet, say ‘Good luck with not being hanged, poor fellow! I have to dash!,' and run for my life.

When the time comes for me to leave – 4.50 – I find the self-control to shake Leith's hand and smile, fold my notebook and head for the exit.

The prison officer seems happy to saunter down the corridor towards the three doors we must negotiate before I can breathe again. My legs shriek, ‘Werunia, use us, run!'

‘So how'd you go with old Leithy?' asks the officer, ever cheerful. ‘Good, thank you. Very good.'

‘He did it. You know that, don't you?'

‘Do you think so? I don't think he did.'

‘Oh my word. He did it all right.'

Once out of the prison, I hurry to Sydney Road, tears of shame in my eyes. My fear inside that place was disgraceful. I can go home by taxi, by train, by tram, or I could, if I wished, walk all the way. I could step into a pub and order brandy; I could pause here (and I do pause) and light a cigarette (I light a cigarette, shielding the flame from the cold wind).

Leith must remain where he is, on death row. What right do I have to dissolve in this way? Leith will hang. ‘Do you, crybaby, concede that he has the harder fate to bear?' I ask myself.

I am off camera, holding my clipboard, listening, wincing, murmuring, ‘For God's sake.' On camera is John Gorton. The prime minister has, a couple of days ago, been rubbished by Malcolm Fraser, one of his ministers, and is struggling to make it appear as if he's supremely unconcerned.

Often, at this time, 1971, Gorton is only a half hour away from his last drink, and a half hour from the next one. Malcolm despises him (these days; a few years back, he was a big Gorton booster), mostly because Gorton's incapable of remembering from day to day what the hell he stands for. He has few friends, Gorton. For one thing, he treats his wife, Bettina, insensitively; he barely bothers to zip up his fly after emerging from a room off the PM's office with the wife of a junior minister on the make, Bettina flushing with humiliation. In fact, a good part of the ministry and the entire press gallery, normally pretty jovial about the rascally behaviour of parliamentarians, at least so far as zippers and fly buttons are concerned, are disgusted with John.

It might be Bill Peach doing the interview, maybe Richard Carleton. I should remember if it was Richard Carleton, because he would have been savage. Savage is okay, but he is a conceited prick, Richard Carleton, like a vain schoolboy who scorns his teachers.

Gorton is facing the end of his tenure as PM, and in keeping with the melodramatic metaphors that politics attracts, I could say that he was on the scaffold, the trapdoor beneath his feet about to swing open. It's to be an execution.

All this is unfolding fifteen months before my visit to Leith in Pentridge. Gorton on the scaffold will fall through the air metaphorically, and his neck will metaphorically be broken, and he will die, metaphorically. And then he will wake up the next morning and think, ‘No longer Prime Minister, what a bastard.' And he will have his breakfast, and Bettina will comfort him, and his kids will call by and say consoling things. Then he'll have a beer and mutter once more, ‘What a bastard.'

As I hurry out of the prison, trembling like a kitten, the image in my mind is of the fear in Leith's face. What is waiting for him is not metaphoric. For Leith, it will be the end of the one truly precious thing that anyone possesses: the spark of life.

The political stories on
TDT
– well, they're a game. A serious game, but a game nonetheless. You win this round, you lose the next. If your life amounts to anything, you can recover. It's the stories where people's lives are at stake that really shake me.

I've been a communist, sure – maybe I still am – but slogans have never meant a thing to me. Slogans, dogmas, ideologies: they have their place if you like, but thank God, I have always been more devoted to the individual lives of individual people.

Allan Hogan does Leith's story. He gives all the details of the case; he interviews Peter Brett. We see images of Leith, of him entering court, and of his wife. It's a good, solid story, as always when Allan is in control. But the story doesn't make any difference to Leith's situation.

He is not hanged, however. His sentence is commuted to twenty-five years in prison. After further appeals, Leith is released, in 1983. The evidence of his innocence had become so overwhelming that even those with a vested interest in seeing him hang, or at least spend most of his life in jail – the police, who didn't wish to concede any shortcomings in their investigation – are forced to acknowledge that Leith's wife's death was not murder. When the news comes through in 1985 that Leith has been released, I hear it with a flush of gladness. This is what good, hard, disciplined investigative journalism makes possible.

I think,
One innocent man spared hanging; a million others, men and women and small children, just as innocent, hanged in my lifetime. But I am happy that at least this one has been spared.

  
20
  

THE TALENT

T
he appeal of each night's program is dependent on ‘the talent' – those who appear in the stories. Certain politicians give great value, are great ‘talent'.

One of these people is Fred Daly, the Minister for Administrative Services and Leader of the House in the Whitlam government. He gives his tales a garnish of humour, as you'll recall, Robert, from his 1974 ‘Valley of Death' performance in parliament, when he ridiculed Billy Snedden, the Leader of the Opposition. Snedden had boasted that Liberal MPs would follow him ‘through the Valley of Death' and Fred, responding the next day, claimed that he'd searched all the relevant documents but could find no such electorate as Valley of Death in the Australian Commonwealth.

Jim Cairns we don't bother with until later in the Whitlam years. Then he starts to be considered talent, but not for his charisma – there's none there – but because you might get him to say something mad or bad. People on the right think that the ABC staff, and particularly the
TDT
reporters and presenters, are fervently devoted to promoting some socialist agenda. We adore the ALP, they think. Really? Bill is delighted when he gets a chance to milk the madness out of people like Cairns. Any good journalist's loyalty is to the story above all else. At
TDT
, we hide stories that would reveal how many slobs and schmucks are in the ALP? No, no, no. We love stories about slobs and schmucks in the ALP, and everywhere else in Australian politics. If Allan or Andrew or Ian Finlay, or even Peter Couchman, came across evidence of Gough living on smack, what do you think they'd do? They'd get the story on air even if it were the eve of the election. Of course! They'd be a bit grieved at destroying the ALP's chance at government for the first time in five hundred years, sure. But baby – the story!

John Gorton, we never court. He's crap television.

Billy Snedden is good. He has the intellect of a retarded wombat, but his bluster is tasty.

Gough, I love. He is insanely egotistical, sure, but I notice he has a heart in him. He's completely unsentimental, but the heart is there; it's a good one. I chat with him off camera a few times. He has no knack for small talk and substitutes his erudition. It comes up in conversation that my background is Polish, and he runs through the Poles he knows personally, also the more famous Poles, and delights me by refusing to mention Chopin, and instead mentioning Tadeusz Kościuszko and Paweł Strzelecki. He can roll on in that characteristic cadence of his forever, much in the manner of an autodidact, not that he is one. All the while, I'm staring almost straight up in the air; he towers over me like Mount Kosciuszko above a molehill. I want to clap and laugh, reach up and pat him on his cheeks.

I also want to say, ‘Your wife is fabulous, Mr Whitlam, please tell her I said so.'

Malcolm Fraser also plays well on television. When I first meet him, I see a shyness that you sometimes come across in towering men who have spent a lot of their lives being over-conspicuous. He's even more conspicuous now, in 1969, speaking up against Gorton. We take a crew down to his property at Nareen to interview him. There is some suggestion that we might make a story out of this fellow with the patrician bearing, characterised in the media as an aloof country squire, get him to say something ridiculous, such as ‘Bring back the stocks, also public floggings.' We might be able to follow him about his property and catch on camera the serfs tugging their forelocks as he passes.

He's nothing like that, in fact. He's intelligent, essentially egalitarian, and there's a genuine interest there in other humans. We don't get any footage of Malcolm exercising the
droit du seigneur
or calling for the cat-o'-nine-tails. He's charming enough; his manners are perfect.

Watching him, I experience a spooky little frisson of premonition. Malcolm, I think, will become leader of the opposition, but not before Gough becomes prime minister, and then somehow or other, one fine day, one foul day, Malcolm will meet Gough in the political arena, and become PM. Then he will meet Bob Hawke in that same arena, and cease to be PM.

I say to myself,
Werunia, who do you think you are, a gypsy fortune teller? You're ridiculous. Don't say anything about this to Malcolm
.

But I do, naturally.

We stay the night at Nareen, and drink heartily, and the chance comes for me to reveal my vision. Malcolm laughs, I laugh.

He says, ‘Gough becomes PM? I doubt that. And I will never be opposition leader, never be PM, and Hawke will be at the ACTU until he retires.'

I insist, ‘Oh, yes, it will happen.'

He bets me a bottle of the best local wine that he will never become opposition leader, let alone prime minister.

I meet Tamie, naturally. She's a wife of the Classic School; it's impossible to imagine a woman who'd make a more complete, more competent missus for an ambitious MP on the land. I get the feeling that she could dig a dozen post-holes between nine and noon, looking gorgeous in twill trousers and shirt, shower, change outfits, prepare lunch, and serve it in a skirt and blouse, spend two hours over the Nareen accounts, then organise a five-course meal for a visiting Nobel laureate. And, sure, have the reading to discuss Leavis and Derrida over the soup and grilled trout. She admires a pendant I'm wearing, an ankh symbol in silver, signifying life and the spirit in us all (well, not quite all). I make a gift of it to her. Years and years later I meet her once more, she looks about six months older, and she has a perfect recollection of the day of our last meeting, and the gift.

And, of course, both Malcolm and I live long enough to see my prediction come to pass. Let me tell you about the day on which the Oracle of Lvov was vindicated – the day on which this drama I'd foreseen while completely pissed began to unfold.

Word comes through to Gordon Street from Canberra that Malcolm is about to draw himself up to his full height, throw out his chest, and challenge Billy Snedden for the leadership of the Liberal Party. This is a big deal. Gough and the Labor Party are confident that the electorate will never vote Snedden into office. It's not just that Snedden is hopeless; it's that he doesn't
realise
he's hopeless. He thinks he's masterful, and in believing this, he's become a figure of fun. Malcolm would be a much bigger problem for Labor. He's intelligent, ruthless, ambitious. And he's not in the least bit afraid of Gough.

Malcolm makes his run, wins the ballot. Then he's all over the television studios, laying down footage for the big current affairs shows. But as of five in the afternoon, not for
TDT
. He's flown down to Melbourne from Canberra and we're desperate to get him on the show. This is the biggest day in Australian politics since Labor's double dissolution win in 1974. It would be humiliating if Malcolm dodged us. Malcolm's people haven't been answering our calls. Richard Carleton is supposed to have enough clout to book Malcolm for
TDT
, but Malcolm's people have turned him down. With a story like this, reporters don't accept being turned down. If you have to walk barefoot over broken glass to get the story, that's what you do.

Kerry O'Brien is at this time a reporter on
TDT
: thirty years old, terrifically competent, and charismatic in a good way. I adore him.

Now, Kerry is exasperated, and, taking matters into his own hands, says ‘Fuck this,' grabs me and heads for the ABC car park. ‘We're picking Fraser up from Nine and bringing him back to Gordon Street.'

Really? ‘Does he know?'

‘Not yet,' says Kerry.

So why am I being hustled along to Channel Nine? Almost certainly, to fulfil one of my time-honoured functions as the sultry charmer. I don't even have to ask. Also, Kerry knows the Nareen story – that I've met Malcolm, flirted with him, drunk his wine, laid down my famous wager. Malcolm may not climb into the back of a taxi with Kerry alone, but he may be willing to do so with saucy Vera.

And yes, that's the deal exactly. Kerry storms down the corridors of the Nine studios, finds Malcolm just completing an interview for
A Current Affair
with Michael Schulberger. Kerry slips into the studio, seizes Malcolm, tells him that it would be unthinkable for him not to appear on Australia's premier current affairs show, and is met with a wintry smile.

Schulberger is flabbergasted. ‘What? Who? Really!'

Kerry says, ‘Mister Fraser, you've met our Vera. She'll be coming with us to Gordon Street.'

‘Oh yes?'

I say, ‘Sure. Gordon Street. It will be a pleasure.'

‘Vera, I remember you very well.'

I say, ‘Down at Nareen, we had a bet. Do you recall?'

Malcolm smiles and nods his great noggin. ‘Yes, I do recall. So you'll be riding with us to the studio?'

Malcolm's minders are furiously semaphoring him messages: ‘No! No! Not the Trotskyite Syndicalist
TDT
! Tell them to fuck off!'

But Malcolm gets into the back of the taxi with the Polish siren Werunia. Malcolm can't resist. We chat cheerfully in the back seat all the way to Ripponlea.

Werunia performs her small role in this battle of the Titans.
Well done, me
.

When, years later, I take possession of the wine, I'm still baffled about my Delphic moment. What the hell? I'm lucky if I can predict what will happen in the next ten minutes, let alone years ahead. And yet, and yet, well … lo!

I receive an email from Robert. He wants me to list all the celebrated people who appeared on
TDT
over the eleven years of the program. Is he insane? Everybody was on
TDT
. He thinks I should devote the rest of my life to making this absurd list? No! No list, no list. They were all on the show; they came and went; many came back again. I spoke to most of them off camera, one way or another, but – except in the case of a special few – the words were mostly inconsequential.

I say, ‘We're talking about this and this, is that okay?'

And they say. ‘Sure. And you're Zarah, are you?'

‘Vera. Do you need anything? A drink of water? Do you want to go to the toilet? Do you want to use the facilities?'

I stay with the talent in the Green Room, offer biscuits, Coke, and chatter away, trying to judge how nervous this person is.

A book full of this nonsense? No.

Robert has written, ‘all the famous people, like Germaine, let's hear about her, about everyone. You must consider, Vera, that readers love to hear about celebrities, their foibles and enthusiasms.'

Do they, then? Do readers enjoy such nonsense? Readers, I'm ashamed of you. I will tell you about Germaine and then be satisfied.

Dear God, first Robert tries to persuade me to describe orgasms, and now intimate moments from the lives of the famous. I'm worried about Robert's sex life. I've met his wife. She seems perfectly capable of keeping a man busy in that way. But Robert appears to harbour the appetite of a voyeur. What's wrong with him?

Okay, Germaine. She's doing a big publicity tour for her book
The Female Eunuch
. I've read the book. It's okay. Nobody's going to rave about the subtlety of her thought, but it's okay. Men want their nonsense to last forever, and it can't. Women need her polemic.

Germaine is on the show with Bob, who's President of the ACTU at this time. Bob believes passionately that he's the most brilliant man on the planet. Germaine believes that she's the most brilliant human who ever lived. They're fascinated with each other, and also insanely competitive. Bob shows he's on the side of women, up to a point. He says complimentary things about Germaine, and also a few condescending things. Bob's schtick is better for television than Germaine's, but she's keeping up.

I know from talking to her in the Green Room before the show that Germaine's great subject is not truly women's liberation but Germaine, and after the show I'm interested to see her coming on to Bob, not waiting for him to show he adores her. Bob's going to be prime minister one day: he knows it; she knows it. Their mutual fascination is an acceptance of equality. They're twins in their vanity, also in their immaturity. Both are adolescents, forever.