Afternoons with Harvey Beam Read online

  Harvey takes one look at the scaled-down affair and decides a drink is in order.

  But they’re few and far between on the balcony adjacent to the main room, where advertising executives, senior managers, promotions girls and his fellow metro presenters have dutifully gathered to pool their anxieties. Harvey spots just two drinks waiters moving at an indolent pace among the three hundred or so guests and makes a snap decision to take his pre-event activity elsewhere.

  He heads for 99 On York where earlier in the day Beam had met up with Penny. His sister was in town for the annual gift fair that keeps her Shorton knick-knack shop perennially brimming with useless shiny things and books about friendship that will only ever be opened after the apocalypse when it’s all about making fires. Inevitably Penny had used the occasion to talk about their sister and the many ways Naomi had let Penny down of late. Unanswered invitations, misconstrued text messages, subverted agendas … most of which, he interpreted, had occurred via the apparently benign conduit that is their mother, Lynn. Benign in the manner of early-stage skin cancer.

  Penny felt more passionately about this topic—her toxic sister—than anything else. When she wasn’t pointing out Naomi’s many inconsistencies and deficiencies, Penny was cast-netting for sympathy over something Naomi had said, or not said, or probably said, or allegedly said. Attack, retreat, repeat. Beam found himself thinking, not for the first time, that if these two women weren’t so intent on convincing imagined juries of the other’s flaws, they might both be infinitely happier. Though with much less to talk about.

  But then nothing about sharing genetic material is that simple (although simply walking away is highly underrated, in his opinion). Beam hadn’t spoken to his brother since he’d left Shorton.

  As if on cue, Penny switched the subject from Naomi to Bryan.

  ‘You know Bryan is taking Dad’s sickness really hard,’ she said. ‘He’s given up his job to care for him.’

  Beam flinched. ‘That seems like an absurd reaction in the circumstances,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just … delusional. As if he’s pining for the man Dad wasn’t rather than who he is.’

  ‘That’s actually horrible, Harvey.’

  He shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘I hate that saying,’ Penny grimaced. ‘Naomi says it all the time.’

  And back we are.

  ‘How long has he got?’ Harvey asked, making this the first official question he’d asked about Lionel Beam’s condition.

  Penny didn’t know. ‘But he’s refusing chemo, so …’

  ‘Well, that’s just stupid.’ And stubborn and arrogant and typical.

  ‘He’s nearly seventy, Harvey. You can’t blame him for not wanting his body poked around and filled with chemicals.’

  ‘No. His choice, I suppose.’

  They talked a little more about their father, Beam’s least studied subject, and about the benefits and otherwise of knowing one’s approximate end date. Penny said she’d rather not know or at least have very little warning.

  ‘I often picture myself in a plane plunging to the ground,’ she said. ‘It’s scary but it’s also not. No time for regrets or plans or apologies, nothing. Just enough time to say, alright, let’s fucking do this.’

  ‘You often picture this?’ Harvey said.

  ‘Don’t judge me, Harvey,’ Penny said. ‘I’m not the nutbag that Naomi would have you all believe I am.’

  Beam looked at his watch. It had been a three-wine catch-up and he had a show to do in forty-five minutes. He wrapped things up by giving his sister a bumpy hug and telling her to say hi to his nephews, James and … shit. What’s the little one called? It’ll come, it’ll come.

  ‘Come visit,’ Penny said. ‘Don’t leave it too long.’

  ‘Okay.’ It’s unlikely.

  And now he’s back here on York St, wine number five for the day in hand, though it feels like number three, and thinking absently about a guy in the industry who two years ago had thrown it all away, sold all his stuff, moved to Phuket and bought a tuk-tuk. I bet he’s happy, thinks Beam. Stripped back and happy as a bingo caller.

  It’s 7.30. The mingling would have finished now but Beam reasons he can afford to miss a few early speeches by CEOs and industry stalwarts, all united in their confidence that the commercial radio industry is in its Best Shape Ever, primed for the digital age and ready to snare a whole new generation of listeners through ‘interactivity’ and ‘engagement’. Loosely translated: we’ve managed to make it through another year in which no-one has invented a way to surf the internet and drive a car at the same time and thank God.

  None of the awards are for Beam this year, as Trudi Rice had made a point of telling him in the faux warm manner of an ageing air hostess, but fortunately none of them are for John Jackson either. That result Beam could not have handled, not again.

  The presenter of mornings is the radio industry’s Bali knock-off, a cheap and poorly constructed imitation of something with far more structural integrity if no greater purpose. He’s an arsehole, and also a pretender. He got the gig because a hit-and-miss career in corporate MCing had landed him at an event attended by the station CEO. The pair had mainlined bourbon until the wee hours, during which time Jackson was offered the chance to host a few weekend spots.

  Jackson had quickly become a daily fixture at the station, fawning over the billboard presenters (except Beam, who steadfastly diverted his gaze as though Jackson were an inconvenient eclipse), gleaning their pithy insights and later regurgitating them to HR and ad reps during the many long lunches to which he unashamedly tagged along. Jackson seemed to understand everything about radio without ever actually having been a part of it, which can certainly look like genius through the right filter.

  It was only a matter of time, because arseholes and receptionists shall inherit the earth, before Jackson was offered the mornings gig to ‘give Harvey Beam a well-earned sleep-in’. A sleep-in that Beam had neither asked for nor wanted. It was a risky decision for the station, and one played out in the pages of Sydney Confidential where ‘Darlinghurst dynamo’ Jackson was reported to be ‘fielding multiple offers’.

  Bullshit.

  But no-one in the media could apparently argue with (nor adequately interrogate, question or challenge because why would you?) early figures that showed Jackson had delivered a ratings windfall to the station. Listeners loved his comic timing and all those cheeky asides, much of which Jackson lifted daily from every MC speech he’d ever made.

  Beam knew it couldn’t last, had faith that Jackson’s gravitational pull toward celebrity at the expense of garden-variety listeners and their sometimes mundane anecdotes, would unwind his spool. ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time,’ his father had often said, ‘but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’

  Moreover, Jackson was a true arsehole. And his inner core was leaching out. He would greet new producers with wild enthusiasm, fist-pump their ideas, accept their friend invitations on Facebook, and then suddenly relegate them to tedious coffee-comparison missions, arduous post-show dress-downs and long hours of arctic indifference. He just couldn’t trust them to mess with the Jackson juggernaut, with the delicate chemical equation of his brilliance. His confidence glowed brightest in a dark room.

  ‘Silence is golden, except mine,’ Jackson had once said to Gemma with no hint of mirth.

  She had shared this quote with Beam on the occasion of Jackson’s first Golden Mic award. Since then he’d won two more, done a season on Dancing with the Stars and guest-edited an edition of Men’s Health (he’d left a copy on Beam’s desk).

  But Jackson’s form of late had been patchy: aborted interviews, disgruntled guests unhappy with his lack of preparation, misapplied statistics and stunts gone wrong. Listeners crave consistency, but Jackson’s short-term memory couldn’t always deliver it. He frequently contradicted his own previously asserted views and triumphantly joined dots that had long ago b
een joined by others. The chrome was rusting.

  Beam had heard a rumour that Jackson was now pressing management to give him the afternoon slot; the early mornings were catching up with him. But fuck you, Jackson. Not going to happen.

  Taking one last look at the pokies-inspired decor of 99 On York, Harvey finishes his red, restores his suit jacket and walks slowly back to Sydney Museum.

  It’s a bewitching night. Iridescent sky. Flirty breeze. He loves this city, and not just in the Whitlams way. He really loves it. For all its sharp edges and pointy arguments, Sydney has a soft motherly embrace. It took him in twenty years ago, asked no questions and easily let him be. Let him become something with the flimsiest of résumés.

  In the early years he had been enraptured by the pace of the inner city, loved placing himself in the middle of that hyperactive throng each day. Thousands of people making infinite split-second decisions to thread a clear path from A to B. Disengaged engagement. It had taken him a long time to get over the thrilling shock of there being so many people in the world beyond Shorton; so many people he was yet to meet. Potential interviewees, listeners, callers … stories everywhere! Time may have tempered his green enthusiasm—he’s fairly certain now that he’s actually been meeting the same four people over and over—but Beam remains grateful to Sydney for cracking open his world.

  Harvey climbs the museum steps, which diplomatically inform him that he’s on his way to drunk, though not yet beyond the magic tipping point. He reaches the heritage room, hears applause through the closed doors and realises it won’t be possible to make a surreptitious late entry. No matter. He heads for the mingling balcony, which is still blessedly open via a side door and rejoins the night air.

  A museum staffer is setting up glasses for the post-event debrief and offers Beam a drink. He has time for two more before the doors behind him abruptly open and the awards event breaks like a dam.

  Shit. He’s not up for this.

  Beam heads for the side door—why the fuck did I come back?—but is intercepted by Trudi Rice and John Jackson.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Rice glares at him, managing to look both stunning and furious in fuchsia.

  ‘Emergency,’ Beam says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says, because in Rice’s world everything is expressed in code. When Harvey had been demoted to afternoons, she announced it on the station intranet as ‘an exciting skills-mix adjustment’. When they sacked half the sales team, Rice gushed that the company was ‘optimising outplacement potential’.

  ‘Kids,’ Beam says. ‘A kid emergency.’

  Beam detests people who use their children as screens, but here it is.

  ‘I didn’t know you had kids,’ says Jackson, adjusting his cufflinks to catch the light. He smooths down his hair in deference to the two-knot breeze. ‘Who would have thought you had children?’

  Rice doesn’t let the jibe land. She says, ‘You look like you’ve been on it, Beam. You missed the entire event.’

  ‘But you didn’t miss much,’ laughs Jackson, and Beam belatedly realises the dickhead’s emphasis had been on you.

  ‘Harvey, maybe you should go home now,’ Rice says, switching her look now from seething fury to responsible concern, a swift chapter-flick in the HR manual.

  ‘Why should I go home, Trudi?’ And just how far up the food chain do you think you fucking are?

  ‘Yeah, the kids might be needing you,’ Jackson says and attempts to laugh convincingly while grabbing a Corona from a passing tray.

  ‘Has anybody ever told you what a colossal knob you are, John?’

  Rice grabs Beam’s arm and attempts to pull him towards the door he’d previously had in his sights. But his flight response has flown.

  ‘No, Beam, they haven’t,’ Jackson says. ‘But I assume people like you would say it behind my back. As though it counts for something.’

  Harvey breathes in. Stumbles slightly. He sees Jackson so clearly now, as though he’d never been looking at him straight on before, always from the side. He is a counterfeit note, a slick detail job masking a bad chassis. Beam’s anger rides up his torso like a childhood fever.

  ‘I know you’re trying to take afternoons off me, Jackson, but you’re not having it. You’ve fucked up mornings and now you can just piss off. Go back to where you came from.’

  For a moment Jackson says nothing and Beam suddenly notices a few semi-familiar faces looking in their direction. He gathers himself, is not one for scenes. Regrets everything. The wine at lunch. The pokies decor. Wishes he were home now.

  Jackson squares his shoulders, flaunts his closer proximity to sober. ‘I don’t have to try to do anything, Beam,’ he says. ‘Things just happen as they should. The old move on and the new move in. It’s a shame you fight that. Self-delusion is a lonely game.’

  ‘Is that a line from one of your corporate speeches, John? Do you actually read anything besides your old material?’

  ‘What does that even mean, Beam? Sorry, but I don’t speak fluent drunk.’

  Rice has a hand on each of their arms now. Harvey can’t be sure whether she’s terrified or excited. Things are happening too fast and a part of him is on his way home in a cab and a part of him is still standing here and maybe he’s imagining this exchange because it does seem somehow familiar.

  Jackson takes a step closer to Beam. There’s no air left between them.

  ‘Beam,’ he says, ‘the only colossal knob around here is you. It’s you for thinking that anyone is still listening to your crap. It’s you for thinking that producers like you—they pity you. It’s you for still even being here. Anyone can do what you do—this shit is easy. Why do you think it’s anything better than it is? Because you’re the dickhead, mate, that’s why. And—’

  Beam thumps him.

  5

  With each new structural addition over the years, the Rosewood Hotel has sunk deeper into the marshy grounds beneath. Bottle shop, bistro, beer garden, function room, all Legoed haphazardly around a public bar that refuses to either budge or evolve. The latest tack-on, a sprawling gaming room screaming with light and sound, is actually bigger than the sum of all the other parts, a twenty-four-hour dispenser of hope to the overlooked and depressed.

  It’s here that Harvey sits waiting for his sister, distractedly pressing dollar coins into a game themed around ancient Egypt, possibly the Roman Empire. The occasional penguin motif confuses things. He wants to feel incredulous that his mother failed to tell him she’d moved house but his heart isn’t in it. Lynn stopped apologising for her actions (and inaction) years ago, and somehow everyone has blithely accepted this permanent state of absolution.

  No, his present anxiety is pointed towards Cate, who still hasn’t called him back.

  He decides to phone Suze, never a flippant course of action and especially so in light of Cate’s version of events and her chosen place of refuge. He is confident Cate has not exaggerated Suze’s rage—the woman has a hell of a temper when the plastic film is pierced—but he also regards his ex-wife as a decent mother. A very good mother, if a little prone to martyrdom.

  ‘Harvey,’ she answers after the requisite four rings to gather her thoughts. ‘I suppose you’ve heard from Cate. You know she’s at your place?’

  ‘Yes, I got a message. She hasn’t called me back. I told her where the spare key is.’

  ‘She’s out of control, Harvey,’ Suze says at a pitch that flags she won’t be taking a breath anytime soon. ‘She completely fucked up her exams and didn’t get into anything. Not a thing. I didn’t even know that was possible. She hasn’t got a fallback. But the thing is—she’s been lying about studying. She goes up there and she’s just been pretending, like I’m fucking stupid or something. Which I am! I’m stupid, Harvey, because I thought she was going okay. Stupid Mum. Stupid dumb Mum who pays the bills and does the washing and makes all the food and packs the lunches and drives her everywhere and … are you at a casino?’

  Harvey politely waves away
a young waitress handing around free glasses of something bubbly to the parched patrons.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘a pub in Shorton. I’m waiting for Naomi to pick me up. Mum’s moved into her place and … anyway, I’m happy for Cate to stay at my place if you think she’ll be okay there. It’s pretty safe and it’s handy to everything.’

  ‘And so we just condone running away? Is that what we do, Harvey?’ Suze says as Beam tries to wave the waitress back. ‘We just send the message that when the going gets tough, she can play us off each other like, like, I don’t know … some sports analogy, fucking whatever.’

  Harvey smiles in spite of himself. This is the Suze he likes best, flailing and uncertain.

  ‘Suze, it’ll be okay. She just needs to blow off some steam. She’s embarrassed. She knows you’re right. Let her calm down for a few days. I’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Soon? How’s your father?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him yet.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I hope that goes okay.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Can you text me when you hear from Cate?’

  ‘I will. Gotta go. Naomi’s here.’

  And there she is, Beam’s youngest sister, whirling manically across the gaming room floor, more animated, if it’s possible, than the bleating rows of heat-seeking poker machines. Beautiful in the tidy, cropped manner of the effortlessly petite, ungiven to long lunches and ponderous vacations, Naomi is both a picture of restraint and impossible to restrain.

  ‘Pencil!’ his sister yells across the gaming room (it’s her primary school spin on his initials and Harvey’s always quietly loved it). Naomi seems happy and irritated and impatient all at once, none of which surprises Beam.

  ‘Took you long enough to get here,’ she says, then woompa! The full force of a Naomi hug, every emotion open for business.

  ‘Kids are in the car,’ she says. ‘Like the bloody casino, ha! Let’s go.’