5

MANGOLAND REVISITED

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses
interest in students.

– John Ciardi

Grafton slept fitfully, racked by ominous dreams. He dreamt he was trudging across a grassy plain strewn with statues of people in strange contorted positions like the mummies of Pompeii. It was a Gorgon’s sculpture garden. In the distance he could see a single lonely mountain, a great tooth of rock jutting up from the plain. He woke feeling that this vision portended something, but was unable to discern what.

Staring at the alarm clock, he remembered that he was flying back to Mangoland that morning and immediately felt a pang of dread, followed almost instantly by a slight tingle of excitement when he remembered the trip also involved a chance of meeting Annie Angel.

As always, in fear of deep vein thrombosis, Grafton donned a comfortable jumper and shoes and stuffed his suit jacket into his briefcase. On the plane Grafton would perplex his fellow passengers by taking off his jumper and putting it on again inside out. This was so that, when eating lunch, any spilt food would stain the inside of the jumper, not the outside. And food spillage was almost a certainty. After eating, he would reverse the garment again and disembark the aircraft with spotless attire. Although it embarrassed his daughter and his wife when he did this in restaurants, Grafton regarded it as the cleverest idea he had ever come up with, and it probably was.

When he arrived in Brisbane, a driver was waiting for him, holding a placard that read ‘Sentar Ever Rest’. Grafton made himself comfortable in the leather upholstery of the BMW and dozed as the limousine made its way up the highway to the University of Mangoland at Slippery Downs in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, the campus where he had spent so many years. He woke up just as they were passing under the rusting ornamental arch that still bestrode the entrance to the campus and looked up to see the familiar logo – a dugong reading a book – but noted the sign now read ‘UniMang’.

It was fifteen years since he had, for want of a better word, taught at the university and much of it had changed. The old Centre for Research in Advanced Pedagogy – CRAP – was still standing though it had been gutted and turned into a chic coffee lounge that looked rather like – well, a building that had been gutted. The Botany Building had been engulfed, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, by some rampant, thorny, possibly carnivorous vine and the animal pens in the Veterinary Science block had been converted into student housing. What particularly struck him were all the new buildings towering over the old classroom blocks, the largest of which was an administration wing which would not have been out of place in the centre of Sydney. In Grafton’s time the administration had been housed in demountables and Nissen huts, relics from the university’s original incarnation as a fruit cannery. The canner, Fortunato Gangitano, had bequeathed the site to the Sunshine Coast Council on the condition that the university be named after his brand of fruit – ‘Mangoland’ – though, given his surname and subsequent imprisonment for drug trafficking, many suggested the university should have been called the University of Gangland. Mangoland, however, it had remained and Grafton had always personally referred to Queensland as a whole as Mangoland, or Gangland, interchangeably.

The limo crunched to a stop outside the huge admin building. Grafton was puzzled to see a row of luxury limousines to one side of the forecourt with their liveried drivers standing around talking among themselves. His driver opened the door for him and he hauled himself out, dragged on his crumpled jacket and made his way up the stairs to the entrance. As he neared the top he noticed, on one side of the doors, what looked like a pile of rags next to a Primus stove and a sort of makeshift humpy. These objects seemed totally incongruous in the ultra-modern surroundings but Grafton contented himself that it was probably some sort of art installation. After all, he had seen worse.

However, when he reached the top of the stairs and was crossing the portico to the doors, the rags moved and part of them rose up, revealing two sunken eyes under what he now realised was a turban. On seeing him, the eyes widened and a ragged creature scrambled to its feet and tottered towards him, only to fall down on its knees again before him and sob: ‘Professor Everest, Professor Everest. I knew you would return. I knew you would come one day. A thousand blessings upon you. The gods are merciful. I am saved. You have saved me.’

‘Sorry, who are you?’ said Grafton.

‘I am Amal, your student. You are supervising my thesis. I have been waiting to have a meeting with you.’

‘How long have you been waiting?’ asked Grafton, almost afraid to hear the answer.

‘Fifteen years. Fifteen years I have been waiting. But I knew you would come. I knew one day you would come,’ replied the ragged creature, sobbing with joy and clawing at Grafton’s sleeve.

‘Well …’ said Grafton, not sure what to say. ‘I can’t talk right now. I have a meeting, but I’ll try and see you next week.’ He sidestepped the apparition and strode quickly into the building.

‘Thank you, thank you. Next week. Yes. That would be most suitable. Thank you, Professor.’ The words faded and were truncated as the glass doors closed behind Grafton. Before him was a vast satin chrome reception desk with a receptionist who looked like a supermodel or perhaps an ABC presenter. She greeted Grafton warmly and directed him up a sweeping stainless-steel staircase to the Board Room.

On his way down the first floor corridor he was delighted to see, standing against the wall, the sweets vending machine on which he had relied for so many years to maintain his blood sugar with Maltesers and KitKats. Fancy it still being here, he thought, and plunged his hand into his pockets looking for change only to realise, as he drew nearer, that it was enclosed in a glass case. It was an exhibit. ‘In Memory of Professor Grafton Everest’ read the plaque.

Feeling simultaneously honoured and disappointed, he continued his trek to the Board Room and entered to find a long table lined on both sides with people who looked like stockbrokers. For a moment Grafton thought he must be in the wrong meeting, but a very short man jumped down from a chair at the head of the table and bustled over towards him. Grafton recognised the one-time Vice Chancellor, Richard Oldfield. ‘Grafton!’ squeaked Oldfield in a voice now tremulous as well as shrill. ‘How nice to see you.’

He ushered Grafton to an empty chair near the centre of the table and returned to his own seat at the head. Grafton sat and nodded to the people opposite him who smiled deferentially back.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Oldfield, ‘it is my pleasure to introduce Senator Grafton Everest, Professor Emeritus of Lifestyles and Wellbeing of this very university, and one of my oldest colleagues.’ He smiled unctuously – a pronounced and suspicious change from the contempt with which he had customarily treated Grafton during his time as a lecturer. ‘Senator, this is …’ he went on, and proceeded to introduce all the people seated up and down the table. Grafton glanced and nodded but was not listening to any of the names. Rather, his eyes were darting around the room wondering if there was a buffet or a smorgasbord as had been provided at his last meeting. Seeing no glint of samovar, chafing dish or cake tier, he subsided into disconsolate torpor. The introductions over, Oldfield was now welcoming Grafton in an unusually fulsome way and telling him how grateful they all were that he was there and how much they were all looking forward to discussing the ramifications and implications of the government’s new tertiary education legislation.

Oldfield finally stopped and looked at him expectantly. Grafton glanced around the table and saw that they were all staring at him with anticipation and interest. This was possibly the first time in his life such a thing had happened and he wondered what the reason for it might be. Then, as he studied their faces a little more carefully, he suddenly understood. They were terrified. They believed that he held their careers in the palms of his hands. He was Robespierre – the tribune of the T.E.R.R.O.R.

He shook his head slightly and gave a little ‘Huh’ as he mused on his own obtuseness for not realising this earlier. This tiny gesture had a dramatic effect on the assembled company, for they apparently interpreted it as a sneer and their expressions of interest and anticipation collapsed into looks of alarm and even outright panic. Several of his ex-colleagues seemed to have great difficulty swallowing.

‘Well,’ said Grafton, not quite sure yet how quite to exploit his newfound power. ‘Perhaps you could give me … a rundown on your vision for the future of the university.’

‘Yes,’ squeaked Oldfield, relieved that the Grand Inquisitor was not to immediately pronounce a death sentence. ‘I’ll call on Simon Davies, our Vice Chancellor in charge of Marketing, to begin.’ With that, a square-shouldered man opposite Grafton stood up and clicked a small handheld control. A large video screen came to life.

Oh no, thought Grafton, please not a PowerPoint presentation. There was possibly nothing that Grafton hated more than PowerPoint. He had been under pressure throughout his academic career to augment his lectures with slides. ‘You are suggesting,’ he had said, ‘that a lecture in which I try to disentangle the complexities of the history of the Australian labour movement over a hundred-year period could be made more effective by reducing it to a series of dot points displayed on a screen above my head.’ The response of some of his colleagues had been that, if you could not reduce a lecture to a series of dot points, perhaps you didn’t really know what you were talking about. That reply, he thought, more than sufficiently indicated the level of scholarship at the university.

Simon clicked his button.

‘Our strategic plan is based on a trilogy of missions,’ he began. ‘Growing our brand, strengthening our brand, and developing new markets.’

By way of corroboration, the slide on the screen displayed the same aims, word for word – except with bullets. Perhaps if lecturers found a way to vocalise bullets, thought Grafton, say, by making tiny popping noises with their mouths, slides would no longer be necessary.

‘Looking at Mission One, I am proud to say that we have established an integrated, cross-collateralised and diversified series of enterprises which have added value across the entire portfolio.’

He clicked again and up came a slide covered with corporate logos and trademarks. They included such names as MangoSuper, Mangoland Cellars and GoManGo Tyre and Brake Service. Simon was about to continue when Grafton interrupted.

‘I’m sorry. These are sponsors of the university?’

‘No, Senator,’ said Simon with a sense of flourish. ‘Subsidiaries.’

Oldfield chimed in enthusiastically. ‘Our name is our greatest asset. Just as the words Oxford, Cambridge and Yale have been used to add value to everything from cars to cigarettes to locks, Mangoland is a recognised trademark. We are capitalising on that recognisability to drive IPOs in a range of cutting-edge industries.’

‘Of course,’ continued Simon, ‘we do not run these businesses directly, nor is there a need to. For example, our feminine hygiene range “UniFresh” is a licensing arrangement where the manufacturers pay us a fee to put a label on the products saying “Developed by University of Mangoland”.’

‘Were the products developed at the university?’ asked Grafton, already suspecting the answer.

‘No, but the label was,’ answered Simon.

‘Our third-year Graphic Design students came up with it,’ squeaked Oldfield proudly. ‘We set it as an assignment.’

Grafton felt slightly queasy from hunger and looked around again desperately, hoping there was a table of food lurking in some dark corner of the room.

‘Strengthening the brand,’ continued Simon, ‘is a vital part of the strategy. This means enhancing the university’s reputation as a world class seat of learning. As you know, we have been running television commercials selling our motto “Mangoland – Sweet!” In addition, I am proud to announce that as of this month, we have been listed in the top ten of the global university rankings.’

‘Top ten? University of Mangoland is in the top ten of universities worldwide?’ said Grafton in disbelief.

‘Of global universities worldwide,’ said another corporate clone on the other side of the table. ‘Alan Maddison, Vice Chancellor in charge of Rankings and Advertising. Not all universities qualify as global universities.’

‘And what exactly is a “global university”?’ asked Grafton.

‘To be global, a university has to address issues of a global nature. It has to comply with a list of approved global studies.’

‘Approved by whom?’ said Grafton, curious to get to the bottom of what sounded possibly like the greatest academic fraud since self-assessment.

‘By us,’ said Alan proudly. ‘We set it up.’

‘You set up a ranking system based on a set of studies that you specified which would give you a ranking in the top ten of that system?’

‘Yes,’ replied Alan. Grafton looked up and down the table and saw everyone was beaming with satisfaction. Grafton closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if his initial fears had been correct and that this was not a meeting of the Board but a student production of Marat/ Sade. Then, knowing he shouldn’t, he asked one more question: ‘Just as a matter of interest, which other universities qualified?’

‘We’re still reading the applications,’ answered a Short, Dumpy Woman With Big Glasses.

‘So …’ Grafton said slowly, ‘… how do you know you’re in the top ten?’

‘There were only nine other applicants,’ replied the SDWWBG.

That put an end to the matter. Knowing he had nowhere to go from there, Grafton subsided and listened while Simon moved onto the third mission of the trilogy and delivered a long eulogy about the university’s expansion program and its brave entry into untapped and largely unsuitable fields of endeavour. They had opened campuses in all Australian capital cities, many regional cities, some African countries and several small Pacific Island nations. From these campuses, they provided consultancy services to both governments and private corporations, including an ingenious product called X-Citation where, for a large fee, UniMang would find – or if necessary commission – scientific papers supporting any action, from the use of dioxins to genocide.

At the end of a long list of activities ranging from investing in Russian mining companies to translating the works of Lewis Carroll into Pitjantjatjara, Simon concluded with an exposition on the success of a hi-tech joint venture called The Chimera Institute which was apparently generating patents like hotcakes. Grafton had a strange feeling he had heard that name before. He racked his brain for a moment, trying to remember where but it was no good – his brain had been trained not to crack under torture.

Simon finally sank triumphantly into his seat. There was applause around the table after which there was, again, silence and an array of faces turned expectantly towards Grafton. Grafton closed his eyes, mainly to shut out the sight of those eager, idiotic expressions, and spoke slowly. ‘Where …’ he ventured tentatively, ‘… does teaching figure in your corporate plan?’

There was a silence around the table – not so much from shock as vague bewilderment as to what he meant by ‘teaching’. It was as if he had asked about the role of skinning rabbits in the composition of wind quintets.

‘Perhaps our Dean of Studies could answer that,’ said Oldfield, gesturing to the short dumpy woman with big glasses.

‘Certainly,’ said the SDWWBG. ‘Our foremost priorities are, of course, global studies. That is to say, degree courses in Tectonic Change, Peace Studies, Apocalypse Studies, Non-Western Medicine, Non-Invasive Agriculture, Phone Apps and Future Genders. But we also have a Faculty of Legacy Studies.’

‘Legacy Studies?’ said Grafton, feeling he had met this woman before but couldn’t quite remember where.

‘Some of the older, dare I say, arcane fields such as History, Mathematics, Chemistry, Law, Western Medicine and Physio – what is it?’

‘Physics?’ suggested someone down the table.

‘Thanks, Donald. Physics. They are still available at a Diploma Level. The Global Studies are available at the Unigree 1 and Unigree 2 Levels.’

‘Unigree?’ said Grafton.

‘We have dispensed with gendered terms such as “Bachelor of” and “Master of”.’

‘Naturally,’ said Grafton, not the least bit surprised. He turned back to Oldfield.

‘So how many teaching staff do you currently employ?’

‘On staff?’ said Oldfield.

‘Yes,’ said Grafton, wondering how an employee could not be on staff.

‘None,’ said Oldfield. ‘All teaching is out-sourced. Most of the courses that Professor Angel mentioned are delivered on-line and we offer them via licensing arrangements with international universities.’ He snorted a small laugh. ‘Obviously, it’s absurd for us to try and offer a Law degree when there are much better ones available through Harvard. We see ourselves as education brokers: our job is to find a course that matches the client’s needs among the hundreds available on-line and sign them up. Of course, inevitably, some units demand a number of contact hours. For that we call for tenders from private companies to supply teaching services. We lease them the classrooms and pay them a fee.’

Oldfield concluded with a look of satisfaction. Grafton, however, had heard nothing after the words ‘Professor Angel’. He was staring at the SDWWBG, wondering if it could be possible. Was this his erstwhile paramour, the lithe and supple nymph who laughed and writhed and tumbled in his memories? He knew he had to bring this awful meeting to an end.

‘Thank you gentlemen, and ladies,’ he said, throwing caution regarding gendered terms to the wind. ‘You have given me a very clear and comprehensive idea of the current direction of UniMang, a direction I’m sure that many other universities, if I might use that term, will be following if they are not already doing so.’

There were polite smiles and nods around the table.

‘It seems to me you are embarking on the very reforms that many modern universities are now seeking to implement and I assure you that the Review Committee will study your business plans closely and make the funding decisions that you so richly deserve. Thank you.’

‘Thank you,’ squeaked Oldfield, clearly, if mistakenly, relieved. ‘Now, if you would care to join us for refreshments.’

On these words, the folding doors at the end of the room opened to reveal an extensive lunch laid out on a table. Grafton could have cried.

Grafton headed for the food table as fast as he could without actually running and grabbed a large plate, inwardly frantic that the others might get in before him and strip the smorgasbord like locusts. To his immense satisfaction, however, in deference to his position and the fact that he held their vocational testicles in his hands, the other members of the Board stood back and allowed him to range freely up and down the table, filling his platter with comestibles. Power certainly has its perks, thought Grafton.

His next task was to approach the so-called ‘Professor Angel’ who was on the other side of the room but, before he could angle his way through, he was buttonholed by Richard Oldfield, who seemed to have some delayed misgivings about Grafton’s reaction to their presentation. It seemed that, on reflection, he might have detected some of the ambiguity in Grafton’s final assurance.

‘You do realise why we have to outsource teaching, don’t you, Grafton?’ he said with a concerned expression.

‘Tell me again,’ said Grafton, stuffing a prawn into his mouth and keeping an eye on the SDWWBG on the other side of the room.

‘It’s a nightmare for us. Everyone knows that success as an academic depends on publishing papers and speaking at conferences. How can you conduct research and write papers and travel and attend conferences if you have to give lectures and tutorials? You can’t get promotions by teaching. There’s no way to even assess teaching. Good teachers and bad teachers get the same number of passes and fails because we standardise the marking. If someone’s a brilliant teacher and all their class gets honours, we say the tests were too easy and bring the marks down, if they’re a terrible teacher we put them up, so what’s the point?’

‘Indeed,’ said Grafton, still looking over the top of Oldfield’s head at his mark.

‘So you do understand, don’t you?’ piped the diminutive President.

‘More than you know,’ said Grafton, smiling a smile which was probably still a mite too ambiguous to assuage Oldfield’s fears, and stepped past him towards Professor Angel. As he approached, he saw she was in conversation with another Board member who made himself scarce when he saw Grafton coming. When he reached Professor Angel, she turned towards him and smiled a slightly aloof smile. He stared at her face. The mouth was familiar. Perhaps. The hair was a different colour – dyed of course – and the eyes impossible to judge, as the large thick lenses of the glasses made her look rather like a goldfish.

‘Annie?’ he ventured.

‘How are you, Grafton?’ she said with just enough sense of familiarity to confirm that it was she.

‘You’re a professor?’ said Grafton, trying to get used to this new transformed Annie.

‘You needn’t sound so surprised,’ she said. ‘Did you not think I had the wherewithal to get a doctorate?’

‘Not at all,’ protested Grafton. ‘I always thought that you should have undertaken some serious study instead of doing avant-garde one-woman performance pieces in the nude. What did you do your doctorate on?’

‘I did a one-woman avant-garde performance piece in the nude.’

‘You got a PhD for that?’ asked Grafton.

‘I got a professorship. And now I’m the Dean of Global Studies. And how are you, Grafton? A senator no less.’

‘Yes. Not quite sure how that happened.’

‘Of course you’re not. You never take responsibility for anything.

Everything just happens to you and you have nothing to do with it.’

‘You have no idea how true that is. There is, however, one thing I do take responsibility for. I approved the funding for your festival.’

‘Did you? I thought you hated things like that. Why would you ever …’

Then she stopped and took off her glasses, revealing eyes that were definitely Annie’s, though, well, older. She looked at him closely and smiled a suspicious smile.

‘You weren’t hoping to get lucky, were you?’

‘No, I wasn’t even expecting … I didn’t even know you’d be here.’

‘So were you going to call me?’ she challenged, putting him in a no-win position. If he said no, it would suggest he did not want to see her. If he said yes, it would seem to confirm that he had some ulterior motive for funding her project.

‘The truth is …’ he said, formulating a lie, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.’

‘Why not, Grafton? We parted on favourable terms.’

‘As I recall, you told me to piss off,’ said Grafton slightly sulkily.

‘Well, that was favourable to me. The truth is I am very grateful to you.’

‘Why?’

‘I told you I got my PhD with a one-woman show. My performance was about a woman dealing with a sexist, lazy, irresponsible, neurotic, dependent, hedonistic, hypochondriac, mendacious, manipulative academic. It was about you, Grafton.’

‘Oh, I’m flattered,’ said Grafton, quite genuinely.

‘I knew you would be. I left out vain and obtuse.’

‘The thing is,’ said Grafton, changing the subject, ‘my daughter Lee-Anne is producing a stage show …’

‘Which Nanny Neal is directing,’ completed Annie.

‘You know about that?’

‘Of course,’ said Annie. ‘I see Nannie regularly. He’s directing a production for the Unheard-Of Opera Company.’

‘I haven’t heard of them,’ said Grafton, completely oblivious to the play on words.

‘Well, you wouldn’t. It’s for deaf people. You should call him. You know he loves you.’

‘Yes,’ said Grafton, vaguely surprised at the word ‘love’. He knew that Nanny Neal tolerated him. Perhaps respected. But loved? ‘I’ll catch up with him,’ he added.

‘And yes,’ said Annie. ‘Lee-Anne’s show is already in the program for the Festival. It’s going to be huge. Every political and environment activist group in Australia will be attending. It’s going to be the biggest anti-government, anti-industry, anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-mining, anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-Sliding event ever held.’

‘That’s a lot of antis,’ said Grafton. ‘Perhaps you should call it “Up The Anti”.’

Annie ignored this and changed to a completely different subject.

‘So how’s your dick, Grafton? Are you still trying to stick it in everything with a pulse? Are you porking some research assistant in your Canberra office? You’d better be careful. Remember Clinton: blow jobs can blow up in your face.’

Grafton lowered his voice. ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m completely …’

‘Monogamous?’ said Annie incredulously.

‘Celibate! I had my prostate out. Nothing works.’

Annie seemed genuinely shocked. ‘Oh Grafton, I’m so sorry. That was the only thing you ever had any commitment to.’

Grafton considered this for a moment. ‘I suppose that’s true. But what about you? Are you …’

‘Married? Engaged? With someone, as they say? No. I have a cat. I’m not interested in The Other anymore. This shop is closed for business.’

Grafton grunted assent. Looking at Annie, he rather unkindly thought that this was probably just as well since any allure she might have once had had long since vanished. He wondered where it might have gone.

‘So, what did you think of that mob in there?’ asked Annie. ‘You realise they’re all terrified the government is going to cut their funding.’

‘They should be. It is. That’s another shop that’s closed. The days – or rather decades – of pouring billions into universities so post-grads could do papers on the Political Implications of the Loose-Leaf Binder are gone. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry, Grafton,’ said Annie. ‘The sooner all these pricks are queuing up at Centrelink the better. They’re all frauds. Oldfield couldn’t find his arse with a GPS. Although I’m fighting to prevent it, on one level I’d be happy for Crustal Sliding to happen if some crevasse would open and swallow this fucking institution.’

The conversation ended as several Board members sidled up to ingratiatingly thank Grafton for coming and say how much they looked forward to seeing his report et cetera, et cetera. Grafton finally extricated himself and, with a small nod to Annie, who returned a slightly amused smile, he made his way back to the entrance. As he trotted down the stairs he was glad to see his ragged PhD student was nowhere to be seen. The fleet of luxury cars and their drivers were still waiting for their charges. His driver was waiting near the bottom of the stairs, holding the door of the limo open. Grafton almost speared into the car and nestled with relief down into the comfort of the soft leather seat.

As the limo made its way down Mangoland Highway, Grafton pondered the mysteries of aging. The transformation of Annie from lissom to lumpish had shocked him. He realised, possibly for the first time, how lucky he had been with Janet. Janet was in her fifties, still a slender, well-proportioned woman with an aristocratic bone structure. Or was that just his impression because he loved her? No, he was pretty sure that other people found her attractive as well, which was why it worried him that she was always going off to meetings with God-knows-whom. He wondered about himself. Had he deteriorated over the last fifteen years? He believed not. He had deteriorated early and, having done so, stabilised and had plateaued ever since. Appetite and clinomania had turned him from a thin, wan, winsome youth into a bulging, flabby academic by the time he was thirty. As a young man he had fantasised about dying poetically of consumption. In the end it was a completely different sort of consumption that had overtaken him.

In mid-afternoon, he arrived at a community hall in Caboolture where he found a strange rehearsal in progress. Various people were standing on a bare stage, singing in a distinctly unusual way. Conducting from the floor of the auditorium was a middle-aged man who was clearly the director, due to the fact that he was wearing a voluminous black shirt, dark glasses, lots of rings and his head was completely bald. Nanny Neal had changed considerably from the stick-thin, spiky-haired, ear-eye-and-nose-pierced young man who had turned up at his door twenty years ago to work as a child-minder.

Grafton sat on a folding chair and waited until the song – if that’s what it was – finished and then coughed lightly. Nanny Neal turned, saw him and threw his hands up in delight. ‘Grafton!’ he carolled. ‘What a surprise. How wonderful to see you.’ He made a series of signs to the performers which Grafton assumed meant take five, and came over and embraced his onetime employer.

‘What are you doing up here?’ he gushed.

‘I came up to de-ball the University of Mangoland,’ was Grafton’s terse reply.

‘Good for you,’ said Nanny Neal. ‘Can you believe they tried to get rid of subjects like Gay and Lesbian Mathematics?’

Grafton didn’t want to tell Nanny Neal that such courses were precisely the reason he was bent on destroying UniMang, so he changed the topic quickly.

‘So you’re going to direct Lee-Anne’s show.’

‘Yes!’ said Nanny Neal, eyes shining. ‘It’s fantastic. Isn’t she brilliant?’

‘That’s what people say,’ said Grafton, wondering if anyone was ever going to ask him a question to which he could give an honest answer.

‘The Festival’s going to be amazing,’ enthused Nanny Neal. ‘Do you know the site? It’s not far from the university, in the National Forest, near Beerburrum. It’s virtually in the shadow of Tibrogargan. It’s all a sacred site. Steeped in spirituality. I’m going to be doing the tech for it. It’s going to be the loudest audio system ever assembled.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Grafton, hoping he could somehow arrange to be in South America when it happened. Then Nanny Neal leaned forward and said in the low sincere voice that you might use when speaking to someone just bereaved, ‘And how are you going?’

‘Me?’ answered Grafton, not willing to risk an answer until he had a better idea of exactly what Nanny Neal was referring to.

‘You know, with all the business. Any improvement?’ he said, wincing slightly, thus indicating that he was referring to Grafton’s afflicted genitalia. Grafton was momentarily lost for words. His mind was racing to decipher how Nanny Neal could even know about his penile predicament. The only possible, rather troubling explanation was that Lee-Anne must have told him, which in turn could only mean that his good wife had told her, their daughter, that her father was sexually dysfunctional and she, in turn, had shared the news with her old nanny, Nanny Neal.

Fuck! he thought. Does half the country know I can’t get it up?

‘It’s okay,’ he replied in response to Nanny Neal’s concerned look. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ and then, to try and change the subject, turned towards the stage and said, ‘So what are you doing? Who are these people?’

Luckily, this succeeded in getting Nanny Neal off the topic. ‘This is the Unheard-of Opera Group. They’re people who are profoundly deaf. We’re doing Rigoletto,’ he said, brimming with enthusiasm.

Grafton was then forced to ask the obvious question. ‘If they’re deaf, how can they …?’

‘Sing?’ said Nanny Neal. ‘Easy. They’re not mute; they can sing. They just can’t hear themselves so we use a sign system. It’s not unlike the Kodály method.’

For one moment Grafton imagined that the ‘G’day method’, as it sounded, was a way for Australians to greet foreign tourists, but Nanny Neal was eager to demonstrate. He caught the attention of the company and they quickly resumed their places on the stage. Nanny Neal signed to them and pointed to Grafton. The performers smiled at Grafton and a couple of them gave little waves. Grafton smiled and gave a little wave back.

Nanny Neal then signalled for them to prepare. The singers stiffened and watched him with an intensity that recalled Maddie groaking. Nanny Neal pointed to one singer who immediately began to intone a low note not unlike Mongolian throat-singing. Nanny Neal flattened his hand and slowly raised it. As he did so, the deaf singer raised the tone of his voice until it resembled a sort of musical groan. He then held that note while Nanny Neal moved on to the next singer and repeated the performance so that singer’s note matched the first one. One by one, he continued until all the singers where making noises that were roughly, though only roughly, around the same note.

Like tuning up an orchestra, thought Grafton. Of whales, he then added rather unkindly.

Nanny Neal then began raising and lowering his hand as if indicating different notes on the musical scale. The deaf singers raised and lowered their pitches according to the height of his hand. It was an interesting effect though, to be honest, at no point did it begin to approximate music. It sounded more like a ward full of shrapnel victims moaning in different keys. But then, he would be the first to admit that he had no ear for music.

Mercifully, after a few moments the cacophony finished. The company turned to Grafton and bowed. Grafton applauded politely.

‘Did you recognise it?’ asked Nanny Neal.

‘I know the tune but I’ve forgotten the name,’ said Grafton.

‘La donna è mobile,’ said Nanny Neal.

‘Of course it was!’ said Grafton. He then he mentioned that he had spoken to Annie and tried to subtly find out a little more about her circumstances. Nanny Neal assured him that Annie was single, had been for a while, and probably would remain so; she had dedicated her life to the campaign to stop Crustal Sliding and various other causes. Nanny Neal was full of admiration. ‘She was very concerned about you when she heard about your you-know-what,’ he said.

Grafton, anxious not to be drawn back into a conversation about his sexual competence, saw that the group was waiting patiently for Nanny Neal to resume rehearsal and used this to excuse himself with the promise that he would see Nanny Neal soon.

‘I’ll see you at the Festival,’ shouted the erstwhile child-minder as Grafton hastened towards the exit. ‘Yes,’ called back Grafton thinking, over my dead body, but then banished that thought quickly, remembering that it might actually turn out that way.

In the back of the Commcar once more, Grafton sank into the soft leather seat and into contemplation. The first thing that he thought was that the back of a limo had turned out to be a remarkably good place for thinking: it was very much like being in bed except you had the benefit of a constant change of scenery. His second thought was to wonder why Janet would divulge details of his sexual dysfunction to Lee-Anne. Surely this was not appropriate, but how else could Lee-Anne have known? Further to that, how was it that Nanny Neal was aware of the impotence but not the fact that he still faced the risk of cancer? The only explanation was presumably that, while she had told their daughter about his impotence, Janet had not told her that he was possibly terminally ill. He was able to construct three possible explanations for this: one, that Janet did not want to unnecessarily upset Lee-Anne; two, that she did not really believe that his life was in danger, or three, she didn’t particularly care.

Nanny Neal’s comment that Annie Angel was ‘most concerned’ to learn about his prostatectomy also suggested that when she inquired about his sex life she almost certainly already knew he was impotent. She was therefore either teasing him or testing him to find out what he would say. This led Grafton to ponder why Annie had not been in a relationship with anyone since him. Once more, there were several possible explanations. One was that she had never forgotten him, was still carrying a torch and that he had essentially spoilt her for other men. This seemed well beyond the bounds of possibility. Another, more likely, was that their relationship had been so disastrous, so fundamentally abhorrent, that she had no desire to ever enter into another relationship with a man. He was aware that he had turned at least one of his lovers into a lesbian; was it possible that he had turned another one off sex altogether?

This depressing course of speculation was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing. He assumed it would be Petra informing him of another meeting but it was instead, of all people, Nina’s partner Jenny asking when he would be back from Queensland. She said in slightly hushed tones that there was a problem she needed to speak to him about urgently. It concerned, she said, the Prime Minister.