My dad and the photographer were waving at me.
That’s Mr. Quinn, said Mervyn. He’s our local member.
He’s my dad, I said.
Quinn? Mervyn said. He looked completely gobsmacked. You’re not Quinn.
Pause micro. Play compact C120.
The Aisens always knew who I was married to, Celine said. Always. From the first time I met Aisen she knew my name was Baillieux and Gaby’s father was Sandy Quinn. Then they pretended they didn’t have any idea of the connection. They were cunning as a pair of cockatoos.
24
GABY WAS a Labor Party child. Even as her family fell apart she continued to hand out campaign literature, answer the phone in the electoral office, and act as Sando’s human handbag when Celine stopped communicating with the local branch. But Merri Creek marked a turning point.
She came to parliament to hear her father speak, not for the first time but the first time of her own volition. She saw him announce the Green Front Coalition, an alliance between MetWat, three local councils and all the local interest groups. She was smart. She paid attention. Sando’s pride in seeing her politically engaged was only dampened by his fears about Mervyn Aisen’s influence.
He would do nothing to discourage her activism but as time went on, and as she went off regularly to work beside the Aisens, first at the creek, then later at the VINC tree nursery, he was not quite jealous, but certainly disturbed. He revealed none of this to her. What he showed her was his happiness. He was always awake to kiss her as she left the house just after dawn. He welcomed her at dusk when she was red-faced, sweaty, scratched and dusty. She lost weight and he was smart enough to never mention it. Her brown skin suited her.
Celine was away again, filming. That was fine. They were similar, father and daughter. Together they were both voluble and silent, generous and withholding. For instance Gaby did not tell her father that she was spending ten minutes a day at Darlington Grove where she was permitted to log on to Altos. She did not say she had found Frederic. Sando did not reveal any of the horse-trading and treachery of political life, or divulge that classic line he shared with everyone else: “I don’t know why he shafted me, I never done him no favours.” He did not learn that his dinner was cooked by “Fallen Angel.” They both argued frankly about the Merri Creek and its ancient enemies, town planning, ring roads, MetWat and the State Electricity Commission. Sando did not risk telling her that the Aisens were the loopy left, a tiny ratbag faction in the Coburg branch, enemies of any Labor prime minister who could actually win elections. It would be safer to ask her to shave her armpits and he was not brave enough for that.
Clearly it was the Aisens who lent her that battered copy of Felix bloody Moore’s While We Were Sleeping. He did not ask, he did not have to, but his pride in his daughter was clouded by a sort of dread as, in this, and other ways, he prepared to lose her.
She told him: Capitalism is a bull charging a chook house shouting it’s every man for himself.
He knew exactly who that came from.
He saw Mervyn’s other mad opinions introduced into his house. For instance: Jim Cairns was only interested in the capitalists making profits. And: Bob Hawke had used his moral authority to prevent the general strike in 1975. “Hawkie was always at the US embassy. Don’t tell me the Americans did not tell him call your dogs off, mate.” Sando thought this was insane, but Mervyn thought it was “outrageous” that Gaby could grow up not knowing a thing about the Coup of 1975. She brought this back home as well, in the same bag as her sudden environmentalism. You could have called a general strike, she said.
Me?
The Labor Party.
Who told you that?
Can’t I have my own ideas? she asked. What else would you do if your government was stolen? It was illegal. It was unconstitutional. Don’t sigh, Dad. I’m not an idiot.
I actually was there, you know.
Yes. So don’t you agree there should have been a general strike? Do you agree or not?
He told you it was the CIA?
You mean Mervyn? Say his name. It doesn’t matter who it was, Dad. Once it was done it was done: the people’s government was taken from them. So what about the unions?
What do you know about the unions?
Don’t patronise me. I know a lot about the unions.
A general strike would have been a step towards armed conflict.
So?
Did your friend Mervyn tell you that the governor-general had the armed forces on stand-by? Did he tell you that? The Queen’s toady was actually Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Defence Force.
Kerr, I know who you mean. He was the governor-general.
Kerr called in the defence chiefs. He conferred with the American embassy. He briefed intelligence agencies. He had the armed forces on a “red alert.” You want to send the unions out to face that?
You were afraid?
Of course.
What about Mum?
She was on red alert too.
Ha-ha, what did she want to do?
No, she was not in favour of a strike.
Why have you never talked about this with me?
She looked hostile, spoiled, superior and he couldn’t bear she would regurgitate this stuff.
Is it shame? she asked.
Shame?
That you were cowards.
That was when he told her what he really thought about the Aisens. That their so-called ecological activism was an attempt to return to some fantasy of white Australia populated by good blokes and mates and everything was dinky-di and the blackfellows fed themselves unhindered on the creeks of Coburg. It was territorial, Sando said. Did you see any Turks or Lebanese amongst their planting party? No, of course not. The Aisens were using the language of socialism to reassert white privilege.
Listen to you, she shouted. Listen to yourself. You sound insane. They’re fighting these polluting bastards and so are you.
But Sando was sick of talkback-radio racists ranting and arguing about who they would permit to be called a “real Australian.” Doesn’t even smell like Australia anymore, you know what I mean, mate? No you listen, he said.
His daughter then told him that her new friends were “real radicals.”
Real? he asked. In what way?
Well, she said, do you know who sabotaged the dragline?
He cringed on her behalf, that she should so carelessly give away this information.
Mervyn did that?
She returned his stare and he thought she looked smug. Someone did it, she said.
No-one wants to support vandals, he said.
But who is the vandal? cried his musky daughter. Are you blaming the people? Shouldn’t you be calling out MetWat about this shit? Are they under your “purview”? she said, twisting the word like a weapon.
What sort of word is purview?
She would not answer him but she knew he knew where purview came from.
No, he said, they are under the purview of the minister, and this was surely the moment Sando decided he would rip his daughter out of Bell Street High. Certainly he had made up his mind before Celine returned. He consulted no-one. Gabrielle Baillieux went to bed that night not knowing she was about to be removed from Miss Aisen’s classroom and established five kilometres further south, as a student at the R. F. Mackenzie Community School.