think about their sons' call-up.’
‘You had to do it, girl. And that kid in there, he was up for it anyway. You didn’t twist ‘is arm. And the Gov’ment had it coming to ‘em, I reckon.’ Bernie put her arm around Miki's waist. ‘Sorry I laughed back there but sometimes you have to, don’t you? Just thinkin' about those Sydney coppers running around like chooks with no heads, it cracks me up ... it fair-dinkum cracks me up, Mik. You and the kid already out the back door and on your way, and them chasin’ their bloody tails!’
‘Those blokes up in the sky, Bernie? They're no laughing matter, though. They’re the real thing.
She slowed her pace, dropping back from Bernie to dawdle along the shoreline, her mind drifting back to March and the rush of blood to the head that had made her risk hers and young Jamie Richardson’s freedom.
Bernie might be right; James Richardson had been up for it.
She had met him through their network and he had been full of idealism and youthful bravado. But as the adult, she ought to have tempered that, tried cautioning him that he would be making himself a massive target. She ought to have warned him but instead, she jumped at the idea.
~~~
Emanuel Sachs could loosely be called a colleague. She had used Manny when she put her Mauritius documentary together four years ago and they had occasionally bumped into each other at rallies; she holding up banners and marching, he directing an ABC camera crew.
In more recent times, he had become the enfant terrible of Australian current affairs, the producer responsible for political reportage on This Day Tonight. Along with Adrian Clarke, Sachs was the reason the ABC was off-side with the hawks in government. Clarke had jumped at her interview idea, according to Manny. Nothing in advance for the media, however. ‘If the guys upstairs in Mahogany Row get a whiff of the set-up, I’ll be out the door on the end of a large boot.’ It had to appear spontaneous. Gate-crash the studio, that was the deal.
They were let in through the back entrance of the studio and asked to wait in the dark behind a Playschool prop. The segment on the plight of farmers in the Riverina was winding up. She looked sideways at her young charge and saw the eagerness. And something else. James Richardson’s mother had died eight months ago. He told Miki he thought his mother would approve, that she would be on Miki's side, the Save Our Sons side. Not like his father, of course.
That was enough. She was confident she was doing the right thing, despite putting the youth’s freedom at risk.
While her hands sweated and she laboured to stay calm, she observed Adrian Clarke.
The star of the show was doing facial calisthenics and lip-reading from his rolling autocue, ignoring the make-up woman fussing around him with her powder brush. When the woman leant across to tame a stray lock back from his forehead with her tail comb he nudged her out of his way.
‘Perfect,’ he said impatiently, bringing the autocue back into his line of sight and continuing to rehearse his lines.
Why? He knew about the so-called ambush. Maybe he felt secure in having a planned segment ready to fall back on if his surprise guests chickened out of the stunt at the last moment.
They would not renege. This was a precious moment, an opportunity to reach out.
She cast another sideways glance at the tall youth standing beside her. This was something they both had to do, each for their own reasons. But young James Richardson was no doubt feeling every bit as terrified as she felt and dreading his encounter with fame. The program went out nationally. It was the highest-rating show at this time of night 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
