New Fiction: Andrew Shoots His Bolt
Andrew slumped back in his fine leather armchair, gazing beadily through the bottom of his whisky glass at the array of trophies and plaques above the fireplace. Columnist of the Year. IPA Freedom’s Defender Medal. The Stan Zemanek Memorial Man Of The People Cup.
“What good are they?” Australia’s most-read columnist slurred despondently to himself. “What good are all the awards in the world, when he won’t listen to me?”
Once, they had listened to him, he thought as he hurled the glass into the fire and heaved himself to his feet. As he staggered back to the liquor cabinet, he remembered dinner with the Prime Minister. The REAL Prime Minister, he emphasised in his own head, as he struggled with the top of the Glenfiddich bottle. Not the disgrace who now called himself by that name. Not the imposter who blasphemed the memory of his predecessor by his false claim of the title.
No, it was the real Prime Minister with whom he had dined, with whom he had laughed, with whom he had enjoyed so many long nights and lazy days. The stimulating conversations. The intellectual cut and thrust of their lively discussions on social decay and essential freedoms. The transgressive frisson of the accidental-on-purpose brush of the hand against the waistcoat…
The times they’d had, he and the Prime Minister. He smiled through his booze-steeped tears as he remembered how he would tell the PM how many grants were given to Aborigines in the last month, and the PM would tell him how many babies were aborted each year, and he would tell the PM about the new politically correct Pixar movie, and the PM would tell him how many miles he’d cycled that morning, and they would laugh, and the PM would threaten to tickle him, but he never did…Andrew sighed. He never did.
That was before, of course. Before that man…was man even a proper term for him? Before that…creature had wormed his way into the Lodge in the most dishonourable way possible. And now he called himself Prime Minister. What right did he have? He hadn’t earned it. He hadn’t fought for freedom, he hadn’t stood up for decency, he hadn’t invited Andrew over for poffertjes. He hadn’t even won an election. All he had done was tear down a good man, a noble man, a man of pure heart and clear mind and rippling abdomen. He had gunned him down like a dog — not literally, but figuratively, which was worse — to serve his own vaulting ambition. And ever since that brutal night, Andrew had been…alone.
He grimaced as he remembered again how the usurper had had dinner with Muslims — actual Muslims! Too good to have dinner with Australia’s most influential conservative intellectual, yet apparently perfectly willing to break bread with the enemies of the western tradition. Was this the action of a classical Liberal? If he had taken Andrew’s phone call, he would’ve known that it was a bad idea. He would’ve known it would lose him votes from ordinary mums and dads in the salt of the earth belt. He would’ve known that if there’s one thing Australia hates, it’s an elitist.
But he wouldn’t take Andrew’s call. He wouldn’t reply to Andrew’s emails. He wouldn’t come on Andrew’s TV show to stroke Andrew’s hair and tell Andrew that everything was going to be all right. And now…everything wasn’t all right.
Andrew drained the last of the Glenfiddich and tossed the bottle into the fire, which flared angrily, as did Andrew himself. His teeth clenched. His jaw set in fierce, stony defiance. He would regret this, he thought. He would regret the contempt in which he had held Australia’s most popular multimedia polemicist. He would rue the day he had decided to steal the job of a gentle humanitarian and urinate on the face of liberty.
Andrew stumbled to his desk and sat before the screen. Loosening his tie, his chiselled Aryan features shining in the monitor’s glow, he placed his soft, well-manicured fingers on the keyboard, and let it flow. All the frustration, all the heartbreak, all the passionate, pent-up despair gushed out onto the screen.
“Malcolm,” he began. He sat back. Yes. It was a strong opening. It made clear what he was trying to say. He smiled and slipped off his jacket. This was going well.
The words came easily, in a tumbling cascade of eloquent fury. Waves of anger crashed onto the shores of righteousness, leaving behind the tangled seaweed of persuasive clarity. One after the other, the sentences poured forth to verbally eviscerate the man who had obliterated a proud nation in the service of his own preening ego.
“You assassinated a prime minister…treated the Liberal base like dirt…colonial settlement…Muslim bigots…pathetic…ruin…dumped key Liberal values…disaster…humiliation…stripped of both values and honour…”
He hammered out the last word: “Resign”. Hitting Publish with a trembling hand, he fell back in his chair, his whole body quivering with exhilaration and pride. He was now completely naked, slick with sweat from brow to toe. His cheeks were streaked with tears, the sheer gut-wrenching power of the service to democracy he had just performed having drawn from him such emotions as strike a man but rarely. He had done his duty, but it had taken much from him. Being Australia’s most provocatively correct television host and bestselling author was not an easy job, but it was the life he had chosen.
He re-read the words he had sent out into the world, the beautifully-crafted paragraphs that were his gift to a sad and oppressed people. He had thought he had no tears left, but another rolled saltily down his face to mingle with the sweat of his neck as he contemplated just how brilliant he was. Did this country deserve him? No. But they needed him, and that was what mattered.
Tony would love this, he thought. He hoped that somewhere, Tony was reading, and realising his time was not done, that out there was the belief and the support he needed to take his rightful place once again. He hoped that somewhere, Tony was realising that he had…a friend. Tony would read the post and think to himself, Andrew still gets it, man. Andrew understands.
As he thought of Tony, reading his words on his iPad, hair slick from his evening swim, tongue running nervously around his lips in that adorable way he had whenever he had to use his brain, he felt a powerful stirring. It was the same stirring he felt when Tony had called him for advice on campaigning, or when Tony sought his views on industrial relations reform, or when Tony sent him a small box of chocolates just to thank him for his help with the Press Club speech. That deep-down, rumbling inner quake that came upon him whenever the Prime Minister — the TRUE Prime Minister — was near.
Andrew bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. He swivelled the chair to face the wall. Gazing at the photo of the PM on the wall, he reached down and took hold of himself. He focused his glistening eyes on that perfect, shapely mouth, closing exquisitely over the onion. His hand began to move, faster, and faster. He grunted. His head snapped back. His eyes closed. Somewhere behind his eyelids, the Prime Minister emerged glowing from the surf. Andrew cried out in the night.
It had been another successful blogging night.
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