Tom refills, says, Danny, brilliant, brilliant—fucking brilliant. They’re never going to hold it against you now. They’ll be behind you—you know, such an awful bloody thing, how could they not? They know it was just one of those human tragedies—never your fault, Danny. You couldn’t stop what happened. Just like you couldn’t stop Biscuits from killing himself.
Tom—I could have, I say.
Could’ve what?
Could’ve stopped Domenica.
Danny, we went through all this at the time, remember? You’re being pretty bloody hard on yourself, mate. I said then and I say now—you didn’t exactly make her do it.
You know—I think I might’ve. And Tom, we never really went through it at the time. You were—are—a supportive mate. But we’ve never really talked honestly about it, just like a whole lot of other stuff. Back then, like now, you just told me not to hold myself responsible. You wanted me to pick myself up and get on with it. It’s like so many things in our lives together, Tom, that we’ve just brushed over, never talked through properly.
Tom is ignoring his iPad as it pings with text messages. I can see some of the names that pop up, including Proudfoot, D. Sweety and Deveson—even Vagnoli and Fitzgerald, for fuck’s sake. Usher, Crawley, too. Curious, that. What do they want?
Some of them, I know, talk to Tom regularly to find out what I’m thinking. Proudfoot, the Sweeties and Fitz—a backbench senator, former right-wing union official and numbers guy—are hardcore Micks. Dave and Gaz Sweetman, and little Timmy Proudfoot, are practically the same tribe as Tom—and crazy Jack Dethridge who went to the same Catholic boys’ college as all of us, just a decade later.
Unlike me, though, none were outsider scholarship boys. They came from wealthy pillar families. The Sweeties and Timmy Proudfoot later went through Law and Commerce at Monash, did time with the same essentially Grouper union and stacked the branches where Paddy McQuoid and Vince Dethridge left off. Married girls from the top-notch rich-bitch sister school, did church every Sunday, daily in Lent, fish on Fridays, baptised their kids and kept their misdemeanours tightly quarantined.
Despite being a priest, Tom—like his dad and Vince—had a better understanding of where the church stopped and the party began than these other tools. I was sucked into their vortex from an early age—never seriously contemplated going with the Left. Couldn’t. But the young Turks of the Right were suspicious of me because of my background—like if they didn’t watch me carefully I’d revert to my natural hammer-and-sickle game. It was an early eye-opener: I’d always thought the Tories were the party of entrenched social snobbery.
Tom viewed it as his work to keep me linked in with the Right—for the good of the party, and, I’ve always thought for me, as his best mate. Like his dad and Vince, he thought I could win. And so he was instrumental in getting the Right to back me and to get rid of its teddy bear, Dawes, despite their suspicions about all my lefty ramblings about community, about smashing down the walls and about the window and the postcodes. Yes, he brought the Sweeties and Proudfoot to me, despite their reservations. And today he’s still the glue that keeps them sticking. Or not.
I know he’s been lobbying them on Normalians and terrorism. He’s got more influence than anyone outside the parliamentary party. And their names popping up on his tablet should only convince me that he is being a good mate, calming horses—talking down leadership tensions and speculation, backing me in, getting them to hold tight.
He says to me, Danny, I’m not here to judge you about Domenica.
Okay then, I say, let’s do it?
What?
Confession. You know—the whole Bless Me Father thing. I’m serious.
Fair enough, Danny. If you’re genuinely serious, then this might really help. Conscience is a powerful force. I was never sure about confession when I started hearing it. And honestly, sometimes I’m still not. But I’ve seen it change many lives—people who were stuck at hurdles in their consciences are suddenly able to move on.
I drink more whisky, say, Really, Tom? So tell me, what does a priest like you do when he’s got a heavy soul? How do you go about clearing your conscience when there’s something you’ve got to get off your chest?
Mate, there are other priests in the community here. I can confess to them. But there’s also intensive prayer. Dealing with your own sin when you’re a priest is just part of the burden, Danny.
And just how effective is that, then?
Danny, you know there are some things that have happened that I’ll always carry in my heart. Always. I can regret, repent, but they’ll always be with me. I can’t change them. But you’re being obtuse here, mate. What’re you thinking of in particular?
Oh, I’m thinking of the small matter of whether you knew that Chisel—what was his name again? Vic Chislette, the sharp we thought died after the, um, punch-up, you remember?—from that night in ’74, was still alive. Actually, not only just still alive, but living as our friend Vaughan Charles, you know, leading unionist, national exec member, party powerbroker, says publicly all the time I’ve got a character issue. Also whether you knew that the old boys, Paddy and Vince, had given him a leg-up in life somehow. That’s what he reckons.
Tom says, Danny, I saw the Twitter about ’74 today, so that’s obviously something you—we—might have to contend with if anyone pushes the envelope on it. But really, you need to get a grip if you think Vaughan is Chi—
Spare me, Tom, spare me. You can still make out the prick’s tats— star on each knuckle. Next to his eyes, the spots where the tears have been bleached out. It’s him, Tom.
Get a grip, Danny. This is paranoid nonsense, even by your diminishing standards. You want to lie down on the sofa there for a bit.
I say, No, I want another drink. I lunge for the bottle, pour and say, Tom, one other thing. Paddy and Vince—they never said anything to you about my old man, did they? As in him not being a Terry Slattery, KIA in Malaysia, but rather Terry Morgan, stick-up merchant and murderer?
Oh this is just nuts, Danny, really! I’m here for you, mate, but I’m not going to indulge this. Go home, get some sleep. Lay off the piss.
I say, Confession.
What?
Confession—I came here for confession. You are a friggin’ priest, right?
On the TV there’s a story about a lingerie model’s burst buttocks implants. Tom switches it off, then says, Oh Jesus, so go on, Danny. Go on.
Father, I say, it’s been thirty-five years since my last confession. Tom, do we have to be all formal about this? Can’t we just have me talk, as if we’re in confession, you know, with all the rules—like you don’t tell anyone what I say and I get forgiven—but not actually in the confessional?
Then absolution?
Yeah, I want the absolution, definitely.
Go on then.
Well, you know we’ve always agreed that I couldn’t help it—that I couldn’t stop Domenica? I could’ve—there was another woman, Tom. Dom found out.
So, you were a less-than-perfect husband, Danny. I can’t remember you ever claiming to be Husband of the Year. But if you’re confessing infidelity to me, I hear you.
Then I lied, Tom. I just lied on national television. I didn’t say that I’d cheated on her.
Mate, I didn’t hear you lie. That dickhead just didn’t ask you …
I lied by omission, Tom. I should’ve volunteered it.
For Christ’s sake, Danny, I’m your fucking priest and I’m telling you that that doesn’t count as a lie—you didn’t lie on TV. And this is politics we’re talking about. Everyone lies all the time. The bar is lower for you, okay? It’s a prerequisite for success in this game—I mean, your game. And I’m telling you, Danny, there’s more than just your conscience at stake here. If you want to go out and start volunteering the truth—that you screwed around on your bipolar, suicidal ex-wife, beat her up and then deserted her, you’re going to bring the house down. There are other things at stake here, Danny. The party—the election. So shut the fuck up. I told you—no sin. Case closed.
Tom—here’s the real sin, if sin exists. The night I left Domenica after the police came she was begging me not to go—to stay with her, try again for a kid, to make it work. I needed headspace, to talk it through with someone I could trust …
Where was I?
Rome—remember, you got back the day they found Domenica in the river?
Okay.
So I needed someone to tell me what to do. I drove over to Mum’s. I was bleeding, looked like shit. Bev said she wasn’t going to let me waste my life on Domenica—she wouldn’t let me waste everything that we’d worked for on a silly girl who was only going to stop me getting what I wanted. Said she’d made so many sacrifices for me and now it was all going to plan, she wouldn’t let this bitch—this little bitch, Mum called her—derail it all. I could never be married to someone so weak if I was going to be in politics, she said. She’d already made a fool of me around the club and at the firm with her carry-on. She said Vince and Paddy—oh, Paddy, she was always talking about her friend Paddy the politician—thought she was a liability for me, too. Women picked themselves up and dusted themselves off and got on with it when they lost a pregnancy, Bev said, just like she’d got on with things after Dana died—they don’t pull everyone down with them. She told me to call Domenica and tell her I was never coming back and then we’d write to the Pope and get the marriage annulled. I said no way, Mum—can’t do it. She said give me the phone then—I’ll do it. I’ll tell the little bitch my boy’s never coming back. So, Tom, I rang her. She told me she loved me, she was sorry for letting me down—that’s what all this was about. She felt bad because she’d let me down by losing the baby. I told her I had never loved her. That she made me sick. Domenica said I wasn’t serious, come home, baby, come home, you know, she was carrying on, saying stuff like we belong together. Domenica, I said, I’m never coming back. Then she goes, point blank, Danny, if you don’t come home I’m going to kill myself. You know the last thing I said to her, Tom? I said, Domenica, just do it. Do us all a favour. Kill yourself. That’s what happened, Tom. Tell me that’s not a sin. Tell me the voters don’t have a right to know that before they decide if I should be prime minister.
Tom pours more whisky, rubs his eyes. Danny, remind me—this is when?
Almost twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago. You weren’t a politician. You were a guy struggling with a bad marriage to a bloody difficult woman. Some people, Danny, you just can’t save. Nobody else knows what happened, correct? There was no suicide note?
No.
Danny, there’s no sin here. No act of contrition required. Have another drink.
So I drink.
He says, Thirty-five years since your last confession, hey?
So last time was back at school then. Tell me, what did you confess?
Tom, I asked the priest, Father James, I think it was, if it was a sin to lie for a friend. The priest said, Well, lad, that just depends on how good the friend is and how big the lie is.
Tom’s iPad pings—Eddie.
What’s Eddie saying? I ask. Two hours ago she was on the verge of quitting.
Nah, says Tom. She’s tight, mate. She’s going nowhere till you’re in and out the other side of The Lodge.
He reads her message aloud: Phones melting down—punters admire Ds honesty re dead wife stuff—so hurtful. Hating journos. Good for OzPoll. But, Houston, we have another major problem.
Tom asks me: Danny, another problem? What’s Eddie talking about?
The old photos are getting an airing, I say.
Photos? What photos?
The Kick, I say.
Oh shit.
Correct response, I say. Tom, when you think about it, this was always going to happen. But I don’t know why you’re so worried. It’s me that’s going to be ruined by it. You’ve just got to shut the hell up, priest, and you’ll be right.
Danny, what’s got into you? I thought we were tight.
I stand up, say, What’s got into me is the realisation that I’ve been fucking well had, pretty much from the time I was born, by Paddy and Vince, Mum and the world and you, Tom, you. Especially you. Stand up, you prick, let’s take this outside and finish it.
I want to fight him.
Tom refuses, says, Danny, you’re pissed as a rat. Don’t be stupid. Get out of here and while you’re at it, why don’t you grow up. And I tell you what, we step outside tonight, mate, I’ll put you on the ground so hard you’ll never stand up again.
What, you mean like Vaughan Charles?