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

isn’t our priority right now, okay? Our priority is getting you and your husband down safely.

RUSKIN: I just don’t want to hurt—

BEAVERBROOK: Dorothy.

RUSKIN: Yes?

BEAVERBROOK: Listen to me. You can land this thing, okay? But I need you—

RUSKIN: But Bessie—

BEAVERBROOK: Dorothy.

RUSKIN: I’m listening.

BEAVERBROOK: You’re pushing the nose down too hard. I need you to straighten up a little, take the …

The Cessna Skylark plunged into the zoo’s aquarium, killing Dorothy, Bessie, untold tropical fish, and making doubly sure of Geoffrey’s demise. On televisions everywhere, the city’s most trusted news anchor, Strobe Holland, delivered his culturally defining monologue:

‘In breaking news: my heart. Bessie the Hermaphrodite Eel, mascot and beacon, has died aged 27. Bessie is survived by 10,000 larvae. I can’t believe I’m saying this. We’ll bring you more details as they come, but so far, we understand a light aircraft has crashed into the zoo’s aquarium, killing the pilot, sole passenger, and our Bessie. I don’t normally go off script, but I can’t see the teleprompter for my tears. My God, we’ll miss you. The quicksilver wit, the athletic grace, your soulful rebellion. Oh, Jesus … I understand we’re crossing to Parliament House now, where the Premier is about to address the media.’

‘British Coward Kills Hero’ read one headline, and talkback radio was consumed by an urgency to reinstate capital punishment. The city’s grief sharpened into a very narrow rage, which was pointed at my father. He went into hiding, which unfortunately for him meant staying at home while the airport was picketed by wild mobs. ‘I despise this country,’ he said.*

[* Garry was enraptured by this section. And silent, except when he rhetorically asked himself what was wrong with Perth. And I felt great. It made me feel like a real writer, to be honest. And I realised that I wanted his praise.]

There was talk of postponing the final school debate, but the principal said that ‘continuing our democratic tradition was the best antidote to grief’. Which was convenient for his son. No one was thinking straight — I was finding headless dolls in my school bag.

The day before the final debate, I visited Ms. West in her office for advice. When I entered, she was weeping silently and staring at the wooden crucifix on her wall.

‘I think the feeling in the playground is different now,’ I said.

‘No shit.’

‘Why did you just swear?’

‘If ever there was a child of Christ, it was Bessie.’

‘Ms. West, it was just an eel.’

‘Say that again, Toby.’

‘It was just an eel, Ms.’

Without taking her eyes from the crucifix, she threw a stapler through the office window, shattering it. ‘Has the Lord given you special powers, Toby?’

‘Are golden rays a special power?’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘I’ll ask again, Toby: has the Lord given you special powers?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Has He given you the power to comfort a city’s soul?’

‘No.’

‘Has He given you incorruptible grace?’

‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Toby?’

‘Yes?’

‘You make me sick.’

And I was alone. Again.

The second debate looked much the same as the first — except the balloons had portraits of Bessie on them, and the foot of the stage was crowded with TV news crews. Even Strobe Holland was there. At the time, I didn’t consider who might’ve tipped them off, or why they were allowed to stay. I didn’t consider much, other than my acute solitude.

Pete and I met onstage. Once again, he crushed my hand. Once again, he had little to say in his opening address. But this time he didn’t have to. He needed just one line. ‘Your Dad killed Bessie,’ he said, and the crowd — including the journalists — hissed and booed.

‘Now watch this.’ And Pete made fart noises again.

This time, the crowd loved them. Really loved them. After my Santa speech, it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Pete’s address was short, crude, and utterly devastating. With just four words, he’d focused their anger. Then with some compressed air, he’d relieved their tension. It was masterful.

‘Toby, your time starts now.’

I’d still prepared a speech. It was about how my father hadn’t killed Bessie and about how, despite the tragedy, Pete was still an impulsive goon and unfit for office. It was about how our emotions had recently changed, but our situation hadn’t.

But as I approached the lectern, stunned by camera flashes, I dimly understood the futility of it. I think that somewhere, in a sub-verbal part of my brain, I recognised that the emotions were the situation and that Churchill was wrong. He should have written: ‘Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of simulating farts.’

I never gave the speech. The media ambushed me.

‘Toby, why did your father kill Bessie?’

‘I am honest, humble, and committed.’

‘Is he remorseful?’

‘I am kind and fair.’

A bird in the hand

Father died four years later. The cause of his cirrhosis was obvious to everyone except Father, who, on his deathbed, attributed his condition not to his morbidly accelerated drinking, but to the curse I had afflicted him with after shitting on Churchill’s speeches. ‘You’ve killed me, boy,’ he said, three hours before he passed. His nurse assured me it was just the morphine speaking, but I knew better.

Despite this, I remained quiet and studious in high school, and left with a report card that commended my ‘mostly benign eccentricity’ and predicted that I might influence society, ‘as a compulsive writer of letters to the editor’. At university, I studied politics, experimented with haiku, and buried my incipient trauma beneath ceaseless work for the campus newspaper and debating team.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, I briefly considered staying on to write an Honours thesis about Aristotle’s theories of rhetoric. But I was impatient to serve in the pits of democracy, and instead began an internship in the electorate office of my local member, the gout-stricken Stuart Proudfoot.

‘Sir, I will give you—’

‘Let me stop you there,’ Proudfoot said, and turned to his adviser. ‘Robin, what’s that picture stuff called?’

‘Photoshop.’

‘Can you use Photoshop?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You’ll need to learn. Can’t be too hard. Because