The Information Game

In the days when the Canberra Times was in Civic, there were a dozen places round about to go for a cup of coffee or a drink with a journalist. But since their offices had moved to Fyshwick, one of Canberra’s light industrial zones, meetings needed to be formally arranged.

Gail Trembath and I agreed to meet at a cafe at the Fyshwick markets. I hoped the shopping crowds would give us cover.

I sat at a scratched white plastic table drinking bitter cappuccino while I waited for Gail to turn up. I thought I’d chosen a seat out of the wind, but it found me easily enough, full and confident, on a downhill run from the Snowy Mountains.

Next door, jonquils from the Daisy Chain climbed above my head in terraced wooden boxes. At another stall, weak sunlight shone through rows of orange juice, squeezed and bottled on the spot, the sign said. Jars of local honey were stacked in a pyramid—huge plastic buckets at the bottom, tiny breakfast pots at the top. Bulk honey, juice—you could come here to shop once every six months and make it do. Maybe there were people who did that, who hated shopping and owned freezers the size of small warehouses.

In spite of the casual coming and going of shoppers minding their own business, a small girl shouting constantly for ice-cream, I felt conspicuous.

Fifteen minutes each way from the Jolimont Centre to Fyshwick didn’t leave much of my lunch hour for talk, and it didn’t help that Gail was late. Just when I’d decided she wasn’t going to show, she suddenly appeared, a bob of scarlet coat and flying hair.

I said hello and told her, ‘You know, I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Neither should I.’ Gail grinned. Her coat fluffed around her as she sat down. ‘Relax.’

Why did people keep saying that to me? It wasn’t working.

The screaming child was silenced by a Bubble-O-Bill. Peter had sampled one once, and pronounced it gross. I had a sudden urge to ­complain to Gail about Rae Evans, to tell her what a frustrating person Rae was, chilly, refusing my help. Had she refused help? Had I offered it?

Gail looked at me shrewdly. ‘If we’re caught,’ she said, ‘we can bum out on the dole together. Oh, I forgot, you’re married.’

‘While you’re used to taking risks.’

Gail wasn’t put off by my sarcasm. She had red hair and hazel eyes. She’d been dissatisfied with her looks as a student; hair ginger rather than auburn, skin too pale and freckled. I’d known her for two years before I saw her without make-up. She seemed to have grown into her looks, grown along with them. She’d lost her habit of glancing sideways at me when she spoke.

‘What’re you having?’

I held up a polystyrene cup. ‘Something to keep me warm while I was waiting. I wouldn’t recommend it. Tastes like the scrapings off those bird cages down there.’

Ignoring my warning, Gail walked over to the counter and came back with a lidded cup, grey murk bubbling out of the hole in the centre of the lid.

‘The only thing I’m allowed to say is I’m not allowed to say anything,’ she said, waving a bent spoon at me before heaping in the sugar.

‘An interesting story.’

‘It would be. If I could write it.’

‘I thought you had already.’

Something had shifted in the few moments it had taken Gail to walk to the counter and back.

‘Could this whole thing be political?’ I asked.

‘A few months before a federal election? What did you say you had for breakfast, Sandy?’

‘Farex. With just a touch of milk.’

‘Cheers.’ Gail lifted her cup a fraction from the table.

‘On the question of style,’ I said, ‘I didn’t much like your mixed metaphors. Should’ve picked one and stuck to it. Your very own lead, or did you have a literary adviser?’

‘If you’d suggested the correct metaphor?’ Gail swallowed a mouthful of coffee and grimaced. ‘Put me on track, so to speak?’

‘I asked you to wait, remember. Had you been talking to anyone else, or did you ring me first?’

A mobile phone rang, as though on cue, and Gail fished for it in the folds of her coat. ‘Excuse me a sec.’

The conversation consisted of three noes and a yes. ‘Who blew the whistle on Access Computing?’ I asked when she’d finished.

Gail looked at me and cocked a eyebrow. OK, I said to myself, I didn’t really think you’d tell me. I was already sick of pushing words back and forth like bad coffee. I looked around. The gourmet butchers offered free-range chickens, pheasant, quail, guinea fowl, kangaroo, water buffalo and game berries, whatever they were. The budgies at the pet shop chattered without pause. Would budgies be next on the menu?

Gail started speaking quickly. ‘Loony rings me up, offers to sell me a tape of the Prime Minister fucking his grandmother. Two thousand bucks? Two-and-a-half? Happens all the time.’ She took another gulp of coffee, and I fancied I saw the muddy path it made down her throat. ‘Any rate, more often than you’d think, specially when there’s an ­election looming. If you go ahead and buy it you’ve got a vested interest in believing what it says. I still haven’t managed to figure that one out. Your guy gave us his loot for free.’

‘Why a man?’ I asked her.

Gail ignored my question. In summary, she said, this was the chain of events. After her phone call to me, she’d decided to sit on the story for a while, chew it over while she worked on something else. But then the chief of staff did the rounds with his usual question, ‘What’ve you got for the day?’ and she’d blurted it out.

The chief had been tickled pink. ‘We’ll get the techies on to tracing it right away!’

He rang his contact in the Minister’s office, and before long half the resources of the paper had been turned towards Gail’s story.

‘Everyone put in their two bob’s worth. I’ve never been in the middle of anything like it before. Even the cartoonist.’

‘Maybe they had advance warning of the suppression order,’ I said drily.

Gail pulled out a cigarette. Something in her voice dismayed me. Her account had been so easy. She didn’t care what happened to Rae Evans. In fact, Rae the person scarcely figured in her version at all.

‘Who was it?’ I asked. ‘You must have some idea.’

If Gail did know who’d sent her the story, now was the time to trot out the chestnut about journalists protecting their sources. Gail—at least the Gail I’d known in Melbourne—didn’t like admitting ­ignorance. What she’d said rang true to me. If she’d chosen to lie it would’ve been in a way that showed her in a better light.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘The story needs balance—’

‘You know that’s a breakfast cereal? I tried it, it’s foul.’

‘The concept, dear heart. Access Computing has been given the once-over. OK, they handled it badly. I suppose it’s possible this Angela Carlishaw’s taken off with the dough. But no-one’s proved that Rae Evans had anything to do with it.’

Gail took a drag on her cigarette and said, ‘You always were a tight-arsed little moralist, Sandy.’

I saw as if in close-up a long bottle of home-made vinegar on the shelf next to the orange juice. Sprigs of dill or sage floated upright in it, curving over themselves like spiky seahorses preserved in formalin.

‘Thank you,’ I said, forcing a smile. It occurred to me that Gail might be feeling guilty, or if not guilty, then kind of circling around twinges of responsibility that did not sit well with her at all. That was why she’d agreed to see me.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ I said. ‘A story on clerical outworkers. Single mums who’ve mortgaged their underwear to buy ­computers. Trying to work from home with screaming babies in the next room. No need to mention any of the legal players.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Just a whack of good old bleeding hearts. It’s the story of the moment, and no-one’s bothering to write it.’

‘Don’t think the boss’ll buy it.’

‘Don’t tell him till you’ve written it,’ I said. ‘If it’s a good read, he’ll print it. I’ll give you some names and help you with the metaphors.’

Gail raised an eyebrow. I held my breath, realising that in two seconds, without giving it any thought, I’d offered Gail names from my list of outworkers. Of course, Gail had picked it up immediately.

Then she shook her head and said, ‘Too much of a hassle.’

‘But you’ll do it,’ I told her, ‘for old times’ sake.’

A guinea pig bit a small boy’s finger and he yelled blue murder. I thought it might be time to leave.

. . .

The new glass-fronted buildings in Northbourne Avenue formed a guard of honour, regular, in uniform, standing to attention, their chests polished as dress swords. They bore their logos with a military bearing: Unisys, Sun Microsystems, IBM, a litany, the names of giants.

And the little ones, the small fry, growing unnoticed like mammals in the age of dinosaurs, like Y and Z Technology, with Chinese characters alongside the English and an amateur sign in block capitals offering TUTORIAL OF SOFTWARE. I looked up computer companies in the phone book. There were pages of them now.

Lotus, Ivan once told me, had gone from nothing to a billion dollars in three years.