The Speechwriter, Martin McKenzie-Murray [distant reading TXT] 📗

Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraphs

Prologue

Introduction

A portrait of the criminal as a young politician

A bird in the hand

A blown opportunity

Land of the free, home of the knave

Where eagles dare

A labyrinth without a centre

The cosmic Sherpa

A breakthrough in the prawn case

Accelerate the sickness

Sunshine and lollipops

Garry’s afterword

Acknowledgements

THE SPEECHWRITER

Martin McKenzie-Murray was The Saturday Paper’s chief correspondent, work for which made him both a Walkley and Quill finalist. Before that, he worked as a teacher, speechwriter, Age columnist, and adviser to the chief commissioner of Victoria Police. Elsewhere, his writing has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Monthly, Guardian Australia, Meanjin, and Best Australian Essays. His first book, A Murder Without Motive: the killing of Rebecca Ryle, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

First published by Scribe 2021

Copyright © Martin McKenzie-Murray 2021

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

9781925713831 (Australian edition)

9781925938579 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au

For Stel & Tilly

‘The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.’

Ecclesiastes 7:4

‘And other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’

Unknown

It was only after his death that I learnt of Toby’s credo: the one he was secretly and dramatically fulfilling while he worked for me. I’m still unsure what ‘Accelerate the sickness’ means exactly, and, as its principal victim, I’m an unlikely person to preface the book in which he attempts to explain it.

But if I was a victim of Toby’s, I confess to also being his beneficiary. Toby Beaverbrook conducted one of history’s strangest political experiments — and if I can’t praise its methodology, I can at least commend these memoirs for their historical significance.

The Hon. Richard ‘Steamboat’ Jackson,

former Prime Minister of Australia

Introduction

Like many bookish dreamers with low prospects for imprisonment, I’d fantasised about a long spell in jail: my life simplified, I might finally read the Russians without guilt or distraction. Before you curse my stupidity — or its suggestion of privilege — I would add that the fantasy was involuntary. Like picturing yourself falling when standing upon a great ledge.

Well, colour me chastened. As I write this, my cellmate is distracting me with his fourth ecstatic discharge for the day. It’s not lunchtime yet. I say ‘ecstatic’, but Garry’s exaggerating his pleasure. Orgasms are purely mechanical. His real pleasure is found in contriving howls of sexual delirium to discomfort me.

Which is the least of the distractions. Our toilet is obscenely dysfunctional, Garry’s pornographic wallpaper has exceeded the negotiated boundaries, and I’m struggling with our theatre group’s adaptation of Edward Scissorhands. Worse, there are whispers that Goblin’s renewed his interest in puncturing my stomach. I’ve secured some comforts in Sunshine Correctional Centre, but reading Chekhov isn’t one of them. It’s a miracle that I might even record this for you.

Garry became my cellmate after his predecessor, Goblin, tried to kill me. Goblin’s serving a life sentence for killing a man with a tractor — and for manufacturing most of the state’s methamphetamines — and the fact that we were cellmates embarrassed him. It queered his menacing status. He could never forgive me for this, but I never stopped reminding him that the decision hadn’t been mine. As he was the influential leader of ‘The Sick Cunts’, wardens had sensibly resolved not to place him with rival gang members, nor allow him to cohabit and conspire with his own. Which left me.

Months into my sentence, Goblin was ambushed in the gym by a group wielding weaponised socks and toothbrushes. Stabbed, stomped, and bludgeoned, he was hospitalised for weeks. After Goblin was lifted from his induced coma, but still lay crippled in bed — quiet weeks, when he was painfully undistracted from his own mind — doubt and reflection intruded, and about his girlfriend he became rather maudlin and sexually possessive.

When he returned to our cell, Goblin made his expectations clear.

‘You write, yeah?’

‘I did.’

‘You wrote for the fucking Prime Minister, is what I heard.’

‘I did.’

‘Well, I’m the fucking Prime Minister of Sunshine, mate. And I’ve got a job for ya.’

‘Okay.’

‘No one hears about this — right?’

‘Okay.’

‘No one.’

‘I get it.’

‘I need a promise, you weird cunt. You don’t belong here, but I’m telling you something anyway. Something personal. And you’re gonna promise that no other cunt hears it.’

‘I promise.’

‘You understand what happens if you break this promise?’

‘Not specifically, but I expect it will be very bad. Possibly fatal.’

‘Not possibly, cunt.’

‘Okay.’

‘My missus. Tash. Love her. Great chick. But I reckon she might be fucking some other dudes. Or thinking about it. I mean, I’m in here for a while, you know?’

‘Sure.’

‘So, I want you to write a letter from me. You tell her to stay with me, yeah? But do it with nice words. Make her feel something. Then I’ll copy it out in my handwriting. And tomorrow, cunt. I want this tomorrow.’

So I wrote:

Sweetest Tash,

I have mostly recovered from my injuries. During my convalescence, I discovered the pleasures of reading, so you may note a change in my language. Condemned to bed, there was little to do but read, curse the murderous fiends who put me here, and think of you. Doctors say my jaw, bowels, eye socket, and left lung will recover, but that there is no cure for my swollen heart: I miss you.

I know that changes to the conjugal visiting policy have strained our bond. I assure you that memories of those trysts sustain me, and I hopefully ask that they sustain you too. I have only 21 more years in this place. My recollection of