Goodbye Lullaby. Jan Murray
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and watched by the country’s decision-makers. Well, let them watch. Let them sit up and take notice.
And let Dominic be watching. Dear God.
The station identification break was winding down. She was aware of Sachs up in his glass booth.
She pulled the ribbed sweater down further over her boyish hips and fidgeted with the belt. Maybe she should be wearing a bra. Just for tonight. Small boobs, slight hips. She had always yearned for Jude’s hour-glass figure rather than her own. A pocket Venus, Jude back in the day. Voluptuous. How now, she wondered? But why think of Jude Brenner tonight? Dam the woman.
She polished the toes of her boots against the back of her flairs and pinched her cheeks. She wished she had pulled her messy hair back into a knot instead of the Afro she knew it was rapidly turning into. After tonight, where could she go to get a hair cut!
The floor manager, his fingers held up in front of him and his eyes fixed on Clarke, started his countdown. ‘Fifteen to go.’
Clarke kept his eye on his director.
‘Three, two…”
'Now!' It was the make-up woman shoving them from behind.
Miki took a deep breath, grabbed Jamie’s shoulder and pushed him forward so that they were striding across the set and seated, even as Clark began to do his intro for the other story, and, seemingly, before the floor manager or the camera crew knew what was happening.
At least it was made to appear that way. Days later, she would come to believe the whole cast and crew were in on the act because subsequent replays would show the pair of them being filmed emerging from the darkness into the light as they crossed the floor, evidence that at least one camera must have been ready for them.
'What the … ? Clarke, mid way through introducing his story, feigned shock, looking to his director for guidance.
A finger motion slicing across his throat would be all it would have taken for the director to go to another break while she and Jamie were bustled out of the studio.
From his glass booth, Manny would have ordered the sound boom to follow them in.
She glanced at Jamie and nodded. The well-dressed curly-headed youth in his chinos, blue cambric shirt and thin knitted tie, looking every inch the Kings’ School boy he was eighteen months ago, leant across and shook Adrian Clarke’s hand with a firm grip.
‘Good evening, Mr Clarke. I’m James Richardson. I received my call-up notice.' He flashed the document. 'I would be happy to discuss the reason I'm about to tear it up ... if you believe your audience would be interested?’ He held the letter from the Department of Labour and National Service up for the camera and proceeded to rip it, once, twice, three times then scrunched it and handed it to Miki. It was a self-confident performance that could not have come easy to him.
‘And you?’ said Clarke, turning from Jamie to her, looking at her as if she were a complete unknown rather than the mischief-maker who had set the whole thing up this morning with his Executive Producer. ‘You are?’
‘Caroline Patrick.'
'An anti-war activist?’
She leant across the desk and shook his hand. 'That's right.'
‘So obviously you coached him for this, right?’
‘I am my own man, Mr Clarke,' said James Richardson.
‘Could I point out, Mr Clarke, just how gratuitous that remark was?’ said Miki.
She was not pretending now. The comment irked her and the flash of anger was spontaneous, even though the professional in her knew he was simply pressing her buttons, goading her for the kind of reaction she had just handed him on a platter. A silly introduction. She had understood from the get-go, even if Emanuel Sachs hadn’t already reinforced it, that the mighty Adrian Clarke wasn’t about to give them carte blanc on this interview. There was never going to be a free ride. He had his reputation for macho toughness to uphold.
Her indignant denial was accepted with a cynical raised eyebrow, Clarke’s signature piece. They carried on. Her proselytizing on the evils of the Vietnam war and the Birthday Lottery were interrupted by Clarke's biting comments and probing questions. No trace of collusion, here. That was okay by her. She was holding her own.
And so was the young man sitting alongside her whose good looks and articulate manner would be playing to the theme of credibility, thought Miki. Jamie was no long-haired, lay-about dirty hippy draft dodger the red-necks loved to drum up to suit their bias. Every mother across the land would be relating to this nineteen-year-old with the straight line of white teeth and perfect complexion who was respectfully kicking the system in the gut with his clear explanation of why he found being forced by his government to kill so abhorrent and why he needed to protest rather than claim an exemption, which, as a university student, would be his right. Not the right of working-class nineteen-year-olds. But his right.
She prayed her son, wherever he was, would be watching and being impressed by another nineteen-year-old’s courage and conviction. She glanced down at her watch and panicked. They had predicated the stunt on a three minute interview and then a dash for the door but Manny was playing hard ball upstairs and would be loving the tension, the ABC phones running hot with viewers wailing about their ABC letting communists run the show.
She only hoped Manny had an exit strategy planned for when the wallopers came bursting onto the set, which they could do at any moment.
‘Thank you,’ she said, cutting off the next question and tapping her young charge on the knee. ‘It’s time we left.’
She noted that Camera Two was live on Jamie. Manny on cue, she thought, suppressing a grin, and waiting for what she new was coming.
‘Oh, by the way, Mr Clarke,’ said Jamie as he rose from his chair.
‘Yes?’
‘You would know of my father.'
'I would?'
'Senator Roland Richardson.’
It was the killer punch! She could hear the nation's collective gasp.
Richardson Senior was a hawk, one of the most strident Vietnam supporters in Cabinet. The fact that his son’s number had been drawn in the Birthday Lottery would not have gone anywhere near troubling Roland Richardson’s saber-rattling soul. He would have rejoiced, proud that his boy was being given the chance to spill his blood for his country. But seeing his kid on national television, denying everything that he, Roland Richardson, stood for and urging other young men to resist their call-up would have received the old boy’s full attention, thought Miki.
As they stepped over the tangle of leads and around the big cameras, she heard Clarke winding up, pretending to be gob-smacked by the fact a senator’s son had chosen TDT to strike such a damaging blow to the Federal Government’s credibility. This would be tomorrow’s headlines.
They were spirited towards the same back entrance they came through less than twenty minutes ago. An ABC mini van with its motor running was at the door. The make-up technician slid the door of the van open and shoved them inside.
‘Fabulous telly!’ said the woman.
A dark haired girl––Miki assessed her as probably no more than eighteen––was sitting behind the wheel. She wore overalls with an ABC logo on the pocket. A colourful scarf tied around her head, bandana-like and trailing down her back was all the pretty child needed to highlight her beauty. Miki wondered if she had a boyfriend or a brother of conscription age, or was she simply in it for the thrill of being at the centre of a spot of urban terrorism. Some kids she met loved the thrill of being subversive and the camaraderie that came with it, and no harm in that. She smiled across at the girl.
‘Hi, ’ Jamie said as they climbed in and took their seats, his eyes holding those of the pretty driver longer than necessary.
‘Best