The Thompson Gunner (26 page)

But that'll be our angle. I'll be some mad-dog gym junkie with an anger management problem, and that's why I'm right for the part. That's how I get to reinvent myself, move on from stand-up. How I get to do this series, working day after day within driving range of home.

‘I'm sorry about smashing you in the face,' I tell him, since the conversation's gone quiet and that's made it a good time. And I'm thinking of home again, so it's best to get us talking about something else. ‘That all pushed some buttons out there, more than I would have expected. I'm not good with that stuff.'

‘It's okay.'

‘It's not, really. I would prefer not to have hit you. But it's a long story and my life has been a little out-of-the-ordinary lately. Perhaps I should have kept it to just the
kick to the solar plexus, or maybe slugged you with my non-weapon hand.'

He laughs, and says, ‘It's really okay. The kick hurt more, actually. I was pretty winded from it, so the face wasn't a big deal.'

‘I'm not a violent person.'

‘Meg, this is a good news story as far as I'm concerned, plain and simple. So stop being dumb about it, sort out those buttons that got pushed and let's go to work.' He smiles an asymmetrical smile, half his face going with it, the other half too swollen. ‘We've got to establish you in this new type of role. My face will work for us. And I never thought a face like mine would get me anywhere professionally, so there you go.'

He has a laugh at his own joke, and himself, and he reaches for a piece of bread to mop up the tomato juice on his plate. He takes on every meal like a Tudor king at a banquet. I've noticed that about him, and it's one of the many things that could make a person doubt his capacity for subtlety. I could see him happily taking to a quail with his bare hands, if there had been one on the smorgasbord table.

‘Anyway,' he says, ‘face aside, you were awesome yesterday. Everybody thought so. And I want to make this show physical, but keep it smart. We like the idea that she's a physical force, but she holds that back unless she's in a really tight corner. You were tactical yesterday, low to the ground, a small target. I watched you out there. You are this person. I'm more convinced than ever.' He folds the slice of bread in two, and stops just before eating it. ‘And nice photo in this
morning's paper, by the way. The one with the sick kid. Very nice. Sensitive, yeah?'

This time I walk to the Barrack Street Jetty, since I know how close it is. The mall and the streets are quiet, and the shops look as though they open later on Sunday. There's no sign of business starting.

I'm not sure that my paddling muscles are quite prepared for the task ahead.

I can see two marquees on the parkland next to the river, and smaller tents selling food and drinks. A crowd is gathering, and serious boats – rowing fours and eights – are gliding up and down on the water. I'd forgotten we were part of an all-day event.

I realise that the shock effect of the
NW
article has worn off. It's out there now, and that's how it is. It still feels bad that truths so close can be public and circulating in however many thousands of copies of a magazine, but I'm over the lurch that came with the first glimpse of my name on the front cover, and the shudder that followed it when I saw the boozy Rob Castle photo inside.

We don't get to keep all our secrets, and I wasn't going to keep this one forever. People were going to find out about Murray, even if they never found out about Calgary. I didn't expect to hide the break-up, or plan to, but I did hope for more control, and some time to myself first to collect my thoughts. I would have put a statement out, within a month I'm sure, and it would largely have gone ignored. I would have done it just so that it was on the record, and I would have been happiest if they had ignored it. I don't want it to be news, but it would have been better to have put my version out there first. I needed to be home for that, though, and to talk it through with Murray.

There's no
reason for people to know about Calgary, or care. It's not really part of my story. It's just an incident now, no more. I don't know what I thought about it that night, or what I hoped for. I was lonely, I know that, and wanting to be less alone. And Calgary seemed, for me, like a place where things might be done without consequences. I owed no one any different behaviour by then, I let events take their course, and at the end of it I felt both better and worse than I had before.

At the smaller of the two marquees, one of the race organisers gives me a name tag to wear around my neck, and a carry bag with a water bottle, a towel and sunscreen.

‘Actually,' she says, ‘it might better if we keep all that here for you until after the race, but you might want the sunscreen and I'll get you a hat.'

The VIP tent is mostly full of corporate sponsors, middle-ranking executives from a chemicals manufacturer, a transport company and a bank, hanging around in their usual groups in baggy shorts and deck shoes, drinking beer from large plastic cups. Some of them look my way and recognise or half-recognise me, and I've never known quite what to do when that happens. People assume that anyone who does stand-up is an uncomplicated extrovert, unless their act is specifically about being dysfunctional and strange. I'm sure I'm seen as an extrovert, with more than her share of loud opinions, and that means it's assumed that I'll walk up to any group of people anywhere, shake hands and get talking.

The
woman who almost gave me the carry bag – I now see that she's wearing a name tag that says Judy Luckett – comes over my way, straightening out a hat that she's pulled from a box under her table. For the second time in about three minutes she asks me how I'm going, and then she says she should find me someone to talk to, and who would I like? What kind of person?

Her two-way radio crackles, and a man's voice tells her that the first minibus for the celebrities has arrived in the carpark.

So Judy Luckett shrugs and says, ‘Well, there we go then. No time to talk. Come with me.'

Celebrities are found in and around the tent by name-tagged organisers and we clump together on the way to the bus. My partner Anthony isn't there, but someone else with a two-way says that he'll meet us over at the canoes with his camera crew.

Soon we're travelling along Riverside Drive heading upstream, and I'm sitting next to Pia Miranda, with Mal Meninga and Joe Bugner in front of us, one each side of the aisle. I should appreciate moments like this, gliding through traffic in bizarre company – a twenty-something film star, a rugby league legend, a big guy who once went the distance in the ring with Ali. And all of us setting out together to canoe.

You can never tell how many years you might get of this, how long your name is on the list before it stops appearing any more. Each event gives you another story you can tell when you're washed up and it's all over, or when you've given it away and made less public choices. And I read far too many trashy magazines to turn a chance like this down.

Pia
is Joe Bugner's canoe partner, and she's surely no more than a third his size. She says she's trained by studying the canoe scene from
Shallow Hal
in detail, and doesn't expect her paddle to touch the water much. She tells me she came along to one of my Sydney shows earlier in the year, so I find myself talking about how talented I think she is. It comes out sounding like a very Hollywood way to respond, even though I mean every word of it.

Joe turns around and says, ‘What is this? A love-in? Don't listen to her, Pia. I want to see some aggro.' He punches his fist into the palm of his other hand, and tells me Pia is their team's secret weapon and I shouldn't think I'll get anywhere by sucking up.

Mal says his partner's an author, so none of us rates his chances too highly.

The other minibus, though it left second, arrives before us at the canoes, and its paddlers are all standing at the water's edge when we get there. There's a Perth Glory soccer player, local TV and radio presenters and a comedy duo who will need to be split up to have any hope of avoiding disgrace. Anyone unpartnered will surely be running a mile from the one with the silly hat.

Anthony comes over and gives me a hug, and says, ‘Hi, darl. Thought I'd put in a few more laps by myself beforehand, just to make sure I'm in tip-top shape.'

His crew closes in and films the hug, so I tell him practice is a fine thing as long as he hasn't peaked too early, and the guy on the camera lets it run for a few more seconds and then says, ‘That's great, but could we get you to do it again and we'll come round the other side?'

‘Ah, the beauty of television,' Anthony says, with a wry smile. ‘You get to be spontaneous over and over again. Now, big hugs.'

I've seen the wry smile before, on the couple of occasions when I've watched his show. It's usually directed towards a piece of particularly artless work done by one of the amateur renovators, while they're trying to turn a friend's lounge room into something less drab.

Anthony, when he's leading a renovation, loves a bold theme and bright colours. I've seen him go retro, I've seen him go Aztec, I've seen him go nautical, with a room painted half dark blue and half light blue, with the dark blue finishing in waist-high wave crests, and lifebelts used to ‘create a porthole effect over the windows'. After the show had been running for two years they did an episode of follow-ups, and Anthony visited house after house from the first series. Almost every wall had been painted magnolia again, or cream, and all the old pictures were back in place. But he's not a man given to much self-doubt, and he decided his best response was to lament the unadventurous tastes of the nation.

We put our life-jackets on and clamber into the canoes.

‘We're a motley old crew, aren't we?' Anthony says, as we paddle out with the other seven boats. ‘I mean the lot of us, not just you and me. I wonder if they'll squeeze any footage of the real rowers into the news tonight, or if it'll just be all of us making fools of ourselves.'

A
lot of manoeuvring around goes on, and several boats drift downstream. Anthony and I hold back behind the start line, but eventually the organisers give up and fire the gun with at least four boats well ahead of us.

We give it our best shot, though we're coming from far behind. We make up some ground in the first two hundred metres, then Anthony's technique becomes a little ragged. He scoops water into the boat and grunts with each stroke. He swaps sides with the paddle because his arms are about to fail, then he wants to swap back again and his paddle slips from his grip and hits the back of my right hand with some force, splitting the skin.

‘Shit, sorry,' he says, though he can't see what's happened. ‘I hope that didn't land on anything precious.'

The paddle clatters from the side of the canoe and into the water. I work hard to stop us being last, swapping my paddling from one side to the other. Anthony, suddenly purposeless at the front of the boat, sweeps his arms out like wings and loudly declares that he's king of the world.

Mal Meninga wins it, partnered by some skinny guy I don't know who's flailing away and drenching him as they cross the line. Pia and Joe finish second, I think. We come about sixth out of eight, with Anthony air-breaststroking us over the line and a race caller on a PA system declaring that our controversial tactics have been, at best, only partially successful. Thousands of people laugh and cheer. That's how it sounds, and there's nothing to do but stow the paddle, and take a bow towards the riverbank. The comedian and the hopeless boy designer have undoubtedly done their job.

I
paddle us over to the jetty, where Anthony's camera crew is waiting to film our wrap-up of the race. They stand us next to each other, framed by the crowd and the river, and I'm still out of breath when we start. Anthony explains that we ran into a significant technical problem out on the water, and I agree and put it down to the failure of the organisers to fit each craft with a spare paddle.

‘Exactly,' he says. ‘Exactly. In the heat of the moment, you can forget to grip.'

‘And, really, if it hadn't been for that . . .' They move in on me for a close-up. ‘If it hadn't been for that, I think we would have been looking at a podium finish, but what can you say? Rowing was the winner on the day.'

We end there, and I have a feeling I've just made the remark that will close the six o'clock news.

Meanwhile, out of shot, there's blood running from my hand down two fingers and dripping onto the grass.

Anthony sees it then, for the first time, and he almost shrieks. ‘You're not going to tell me I did that? Oh, darl, Christ, I've brutalised you with my paddle.'

That's when I notice that Felicity and Adam have walked over this way from the tents. She's wearing a sun dress and he's carrying a picnic basket, and they'd been hanging back while the camera was rolling.

‘What a week,' Felicity says. ‘First the tooth, and now this . . .'

I hold the hand up, spread my fingers out, and take a look at it. ‘In the wars, as my mother would say.'

‘Do you think it needs stitches?'

I touch the wound, and I can feel a sharp edge. This is what the paddle has hit, and the skin has split between them.

I lie about the glass when it comes out. I had enough time on the way to the medical centre to get the lie ready, so it's quite convincing. It's glass from a car windscreen, years ago, that much is true and undeniable. In cross-section it's a hexagon or an octagon, one of those shapes you make when you shatter windscreen glass.

‘From a while ago?' the doctor says. ‘From a car accident a while ago? Is that what these other scars are too? Let's hope it's the last bit. You could think about an ultrasound at some stage to see if there are any more. Do you want to keep it?'