Holden's Performance (34 page)

‘There you have the four strokes of the internal combustion engine, and that's how our lives and the life of a nation rise and fall.'

Squatting to avoid being made an accomplice again Shadbolt felt like smacking his forehead: ‘Why didn't I think of that?' The crowd had become still. Two crows flew like the PM's eyebrows across the pale sky.

‘Some people, like some engines, can be unreliable, uneconomical, noisy. You get some that require fine tuning, others are missing the spark. People begin to leak and, beg your pardon, backfire first thing in the morning. Some people, like some nations, collapse in a state of exhaustion. Now I've been in transport all my life…'

It must have been all the years of stumping about in his dusty used-car yards, and patrolling the mock-marble floors of his GM showrooms, and moving on and off political platforms which had gradually shortened his legs and widened his mouth, consolidating—in direct ratio to his increase in power—his girth and appearance of bulldog tenacity. And it must have been his hours of public-speaking outlining his pet policies, such as the abolition of trams, which had lengthened his sentences and measured his pauses.

He believed in appearances.

While Hoadley cruised the streets for disconsolate housewives weeping in parked cars, McBee searched for prams and young mothers. In his first few months in Canberra he shook off the usual disorienting dizziness and shattered with one hand behind his back the longstanding baby-kissing record, keeping track of his unit volume in bar charts pioneered by GM—or was it Henry Ford? Every other day there was a shot somewhere of Frank McBee, MP, kissing a baby. If the press lost interest he'd hire his own photographers. In parliament he always struck a patriotic chord (thumbs in lapels, looking over his half-moons). He quickly became known for his measured rhetoric. It was more than a match for R. G. Amen: except when he had the audience laughing too early and he'd get carried away, letting an occasional crudity slip out, even the dropping of aitches. He was always good for the one-liner. It was generally agreed he was ‘larger than life'. Remember the one that did the rounds of Frank McBee receiving the press stark naked and pink on the edge of his bath?

His most talked-about performance happened on a frosty morning, middle of winter, in clear view of Parliament House. It involved Hoadley. Shadbolt was there; he saw it all.

It was a difficult time in Canberra when women of various ages began darting out in front of Hoadley's car like rabbits in a plague; Shadbolt had to keep his wits about him. His lights sometimes picked them up at night: pale, distraught figures. Shad-bolt somehow admired them. Twice in the one week he narrowly avoided running over the wife of the clerk in the—, while others put up passive resistance, lying full length in front of the car at traffic lights, until the Minister for Home Affairs himself had to make personal assurances and promises, patting their wrists and nodding, sometimes leading mem sobbing into the back seat of the car. Pressure on the Minister had been angling in from all sides. Still Hoadley maintained his desire, or radier, obeyed his instinct, to satisfy every constituent, wherever they might be.

On this morning Shadbolt drove along Anzac Parade towards Miss Kilmartin's block of flats. It was an emergency. She was giving trouble again. Shadbolt kept one eye open for any figures lunging out in dressing gowns, while Hoadley, forgetful of the demanding American's ultimatum, sat forward on his seat, watching out for any stray constituents in need of care and understanding. They were in sight of Miss Kilmartin's place, opposite the only shop in Canberra selling Piramidos cigars.

‘Stop,' Hoadley pointed.

Young woman—leaning over steering wheel—shoulders heaving. Why are they so unhappy? Shadbolt squinted. Why do women appear isolated?

Doing a U-turn he pulled up alongside, quietly, so as not to frighten her. The Senator had his window down, cufflinks flashing in the sun. His technique would be to whisper semiseriously, ‘Excuse me, are you…' or lean out and tap his fingernails on the window, holding an embossed card, ‘S
ENATOR
S
ID
H
OADLEY
, Minister for Commerce, Home Affairs…' Either way he wore an expression earnest and at the same time fighthearted—a difficult double. The last tiling he wanted to do was look like the law.

Suddenly, Shadbolt realised. Before he could warn the boss, ‘This is Mister McBee's Buick,' the young woman with the familiar shoulders turned, and Shadbolt saw his sister's face bitterly projected into the future. But it only lasted a second. Recognising the smiling/frowning Senator and Shadbolt leaning forward in unison, she erased the conflict of lines and presented the symmetrical beauty of former Miss Australia, just a trifle moist and red around the eyes.

The transformation left Hoadley and Shadbolt agape for slightly different reasons.

Her brother spoke first, ‘Are you all right? Is something wrong?'

Hoadley had more experience of women crying, especially lately.

‘She's all right. Aren't you, sweetheart? Nothing a little sweet whisperings in the ear wouldn't fix.' Out of the corner of his mouth he asked Shadbolt, ‘I've seen this one before. What's her name?'

‘You remember, from Adelaide.'

Karen took Hoadley's handkerchief and blew her nose. When Hoadley stepped out she smiled at Shadbolt.

‘You're looking better already,' Hoadley bent over showing concern. ‘Things aren't all that bad now, are they? Park the car for a sec,' he said to Shadbolt. ‘I'll have to do a bit of homework here.'

‘You've got that American lady waiting, don't forget,' Shadbolt glanced around. ‘I think she's going to be peeved.'

He patted his driver's elbow. ‘Five minutes isn't going to kill anybody.'

Many a time the Minister of Optimism had said, ‘There's no rhyme or reason why any woman or child should shed a single tear in this great country of ours.' Shadbolt saw him move in beside Karen. In restoring the softness of women with his words and wandering hands his sense of well-being expanded, and it activated others standing around him the way a speeding car produces turbulence in trees and grasses. Any lapse or gap in the progression produced a sudden deflation; Shadbolt (chin on steering wheel) had often been puzzled by that.

When he looked in the mirror again another man had joined the car, his arm welded to the door. Slowly Hoadley emerged coatless and faced Frank McBee. The last time Shadbolt had seen them together was on stage debating the embarrassments of public transport—pros and cons of. As one spoke the other had stared down at his shoes, impatient to interrupt.

Now they were at each other's throats.

In silhouette McBee's reproduction of the bulldog jaw with the bulging waistcoat, and the box of complimentary Havanas under one arm, cut an unmistakable, powerful figure.

Hoadley must have been exasperated by his rival's visual superiority. Showing no respect for history he suddenly seized the initiative, and in a formidable display of brute force, swung McBee by the wrist—swung him face down on the General Motors bonnet.

The two powerful men locked hands: tubby Frank McBee v flash Sid Hoadley. Veins never before seen came to the surface, and from each hissing mouth a series of mushroom clouds erupted in the morning air, which suggested they had lost their reason.

Karen skipped up to Shadbolt and took his arm.

‘Tell them to stop. You must.'

In the next breath she said, ‘Who's going to win?'

Picking up McBee's walking stick he stood in front of the car, and as the pendulum of forearms swung this way and that the contestants glanced at him, seeking his approval. The flyscreen shirt gave the straining arm and cufflink of Hoadley exceptional clarity. McBee's feet barely touched the ground and his Savile Row elbow seemed to half-disappear into the dark pool of the bonnet, making him look even more out of balance; but as everybody knew he had a history of fighting with his back to the wall. It would be a matter of whether the accumulation of brandies and cigars would tell against him, or whether the recent activity in home affairs had taken too much out of Hoadley.

Suddenly Karen's fingernails dug into her brother's arm.

McBee lost his grip. His feet had begun slipping. Hoadley forced his arm down in an arc. It happened so quickly he turned and winked at the crowd. Then as he repositioned for the final onslaught there was a metallic
boi-innng
and a great dent radiated where his elbow met the bonnet. Hoadley hesitated. And like a drowning man, McBee's feet found the gutter. Someone waved the Union Jack in his face like smelling salts, and he surprised Hoadley by savagely regaining lost ground, turning back the clock. Now Hoadley looked in strife. McBee pushed his arm down, an inch at a time. An epic struggle. Hoadley looked worried, close to collapse. Glancing sideways he noticed photographers had arrived, and coinciding with the first flash put on a final display of power, drawing from all his reserves, until McBee's feet slipped again, pedalling in mid-air.

Hoadley should have finished him off there and then. Instead he glanced at the crowd for any pretty faces. He couldn't help himself.

It was then that a young woman stepped into his field of vision. The crowd went very quiet. Her obliviousness of everybody suggested she was Hoadley's wife. But the smart light-woven colours and hornrims were American, East coast, and a hurried ‘I-can-explain-everything' look loosened Hoadley's face, all his pent-up optimism too, for Frank McBee swung his distracted opponent's arm down, swung it with such momentum against such weakened resistance, Hoadley's knuckles met the bonnet with terrific force, making another smaller dent, and Hoadley collapsed in a state of exhaustion.

Breathing heavily, Frank McBee slowly faced the world, and parted his fingers into the dihedral of victory.

The end had come so quickly it was met with silence. Shad-bolt had wanted to explain to Miss Kilmartin. ‘The Minister was engaged. As you can see. He does send his apologies. We were only a few minutes late.' Something along those lines. But she had gone.

Shadbolt felt he should commiserate with the boss now raising himself from the ruined bonnet, ‘She's shot through,' he reported, meaning Miss Kilmartin, and gazed away somewhere at the clouds. But still staring down at the duco Hoadley merely shook his head. On the other side people were shaking McBee's hand. Karen had her arms around his neck.

Two powerful men wrestling over her beauty-queen favours had given her cheeks a shine.

Next morning the papers told a different story: ‘
NOVEL DEBATE OVER TRANSPORT
.' There the straining teeth of the Minister and the gritty defender from Adelaide, facing each other across the bonnet like book-ends, had been screened into vote-catching smiles.

The humiliation, the pain! Never would Hoadley be the same.

The body-blow to his self-esteem administered in broad daylight had left him in a weakened state (prematurely dazed, exhausted).

Now after lunch when they went cruising he nodded off, and Shadbolt found himself staring in the mirror at a tear-shaped stalactite stretching from the corner of the Minister's mouth, like the piece of cut-glass from the chandelier he had once found on the carpet of the Epic Theatre. If they did happen to see a likely pickup or one of his loyal constituents Hoadley slid down below the seat, or fiddled with his papers the way an invalid displays a loss of appetite. This, from the man who literally licked his lips after lunch, raring to go: a man of large appetites, a gourmet of love, who had devoted his best years to serving the needs of others. In the old days—that is, the day before yesterday—he hardly stopped talking from the moment he bounded into the back seat, even if it was mostly to himself. For Shadbolt it had been like listening to the radio while driving, except that he gave dutiful nods and encouraging glances back in the mirror. Now the boss clammed up, as if he couldn't bear the sound of his own voice.

Shadbolt's ambitions were never high, and so he remained level, always more or less the same. With his horizontalism went an unusual degree of obedience; Shadbolt had little else to do. He believed his Minister's setback was only temporary. Naturally men who have a sharper clarity than their immediate surroundings suffer the occasional fall. Things can't be as bad as they seem, tomorrow's another day; where do we go from here? He made extra efforts, to give his Minister a hand. But Hoadley couldn't bear for the moment displays of automatic loyalty. Hoadley had become formal. ‘You stick to what you know, which is the streets. I don't want to hear any more garbage,' being one nasal response. So Shadbolt drove around in circles. The Minister had entered a bewildering trough of pessimism which coincided with the nation's economic trough.

The sudden loss of will-power. Loss of ‘spark'. It transmitted to the streets. Other government drivers gave Shadbolt the old nudge-nudge, oink-oink. The word went around that Hoadley's elbows, key instruments in the mastery of Commerce, Home Affairs and the Interior, had collapsed under the strain.

Could this be true? In Canberra half-truths were always doing the rounds. Sensing a weakness Hoadley was subjected to the savage scepticism of opposition senators and the gutter press. Rumours began circulating of a splitting up of his portfolio, although anybody could see the parts were interdependent. The load was too much for the elbows of one man, it was said, when only a few weeks ago there had been talk of adding Transport to his responsibilities.

Unable or unwilling to satisfy the needs of his constituents Hoadley kept a lower and lower profile until he could no longer be seen in the back of his limousine. His ‘disappearance' caused a build-up in local anxiety levels, much handkerchief-twisting, back-biting and telephone ringing, a backlog of clamouring supplicants. Their frustrations reached an almost intolerable pressure-point, until a subsidence occurred, most accepting the new circumstances, their fate, which seemed to be one of poetic neglect, the shape of themselves blurred by the heat and openess of the long days, framed by flyscreens. The most fragile ones (wife of the—) persevered. The continuing absence of Hoadley only made them suspicious: lying in wait—misunderstanding feeding on itself—cajoling, threatening. Hoadley's instructions to Shadbolt were to steer clear of uncertain streets and suddenly accelerate past certain tennis courts and parked cars; but it didn't stop him being recognised and appealed to, as when Miss Kilmartin, who apparently had no idea of the trouble she had caused, tailed Shadbolt into the Gymnasium for Men. ‘Tell him he can't do tins to me,' she screeched among the sweating bodybuilders, and the Asian student Shadbolt caught leaving calligraphic ultimatums on his windscreen.