Love’s Labor Lost (or, The Night I Met Paul Keating in a Dingy Stairwell in Sydney)By TESS St CLAIRIt was raining outside and it was dark... We walked down Macleay Street looking half-heartedly for somewhere to eat. Admiring the architecture of the apartment buildings lining the street, an open home sign almost sent me sprawling. So we went in, laughing, for a sticky-beak. We rode the service elevator to the fifth floor, as the regular lifts were under repair. It was one of those rickety old things with the steel cage door. It bumped its way upward and we chatted to the resident and her young daughter who shared our ride. She started a little sales pitch, telling us how great the building was to live in and what a great area Potts Point was. She needn’t have bothered, we could tell. The apartment was ‘beautifully appointed’ as they say. Two bedrooms, narrow bathroom, narrow galley kitchen, lovely lounge and spacious dining, original 1930s details, very tasteful. We felt ourselves being drawn into the lull of ‘hmmm, $500,000, not bad for Sydney’. Realising how ridiculous we sounded, we made for the exit before the agent made for our cheque books. On a whim, we walked down the dingy narrow staircase rather than take the lift again. And then it happened. A shaft of golden light didn’t appear, there was no choir of heavenly angels. But there he was. Walking up the stairs as we walked down was Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia, PK to those who love him. He was tall and thin as I expected, he wore a navy suit as I expected, but his skin bore a yellowish-grey pallor, which I didn’t expect. His hair was thinner than I remembered and showing its years. He looked hurried and harried and barely met my gaze. Behind him, checking to his left and right like Hector the Cat, was PK’s minder who, as I expected, wore an earpiece and sunglasses even though it was night. And a cheap tracksuit. A minder in tracky dacks, I didn’t expect that. PK looked up like a roo caught in the headlights. He looked fearful that I might speak to him and interrupt his night or his train of thought. He looked determined to be left alone. And he looked a little afraid. I wanted to say ‘Good evening Mr Keating’. I wanted to tell him that in 1996 he inspired me to enrol to vote for the first time in my life. I wanted to tell him how I had sat on the front step of my house and smoked a cigarette and cried when he lost. I wanted to tell him he was right to warn us to look to Asia instead of Europe, the UK, and the US. I wanted to thank him for teaching me the word ‘recalcitrant’, and how I love the feel of that word rolling around my mouth. Recalcitrant. In the blush of pre-election enthusiasm I wanted to tell him that, at last, I was feeling inspired again! A thousand wants jostled for position in my mind in that brief flash of a moment when PK’s eyes met mine in that dingy stairwell in Sydney. Instead I think I might have managed a strangled ‘hello’. More than a little star-struck, I burst forth from the foyer of the building back into the rain-slicked and darkened street. With each step down Macleay Street to Woolloomooloo I kicked myself. Should have said this, why didn’t I say that, if only I could have shaken his hand and uttered some dignified witticism. But he wanted to be left alone and the best I could do was honour his wish. In hindsight I wonder if he somehow knew. In my revisionist mind’s eye perhaps he seemed a little embarrassed. Maybe he knew, even then, that those who loved him, those who loved Labor, those who were inspired this time around would be left with a bitter aftertaste. Perhaps like us, he felt disenfranchised, disenchanted, and not a little ashamed.
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Monday, November 22, 2004 |