Chapter Nineteen

19


My two faces

‘Monkey, I happened to be rabbiting through your personal things earlier in the day and I came across a copy of your CV.’

Sunday evening. Six o’clock. Happy Hour in the Hartley Castle court room. Gusts of wind threw intermittent rain squalls against the windows, the audio equivalent of caffeine-high cockroaches in a cake tin. Kurt and Courtney were snuggled up on a rug in front of a slowly building log fire while Gabriel and I, rugged up in beanies and coats, readied drinks at the bar. Gabriel climbed purposefully aboard her bar stool, three sheets of stapled A4 paper clutched in a tiny olive skinned hand. I was already seated in the judge’s chair, open Stella Artois by the gavel, watching her flick head down through my resume. What I could see of her face through a fish shop blind of hair was worryingly stern. Somehow it felt like we should swap seats.

‘And?’ I said finally.

She started. ‘What? Oh, right, this is a list of the clients you’ve worked on in your advertising career.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘We’ll start at the beginning and work our way through…Your first agency. Gestro Horne, Auckland. Clients worked on. ASB Bank.’ She looked up at me.

I shrugged. ‘Yes? ASB Bank? Auckland Savings Bank?’ I shrugged again.

‘You hate banks.’

‘With a passion.’

‘Yet you’re happy to write ads for them.’

‘If there’s a quid in it, yes.’

‘Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?’

‘No, it’s totally hypocritical. But such is life in advertising. You can’t pick and choose which accounts you work on.’

‘She skimmed through the list. ‘What’s Kinsey Laboratories?’

‘Animal products.’

‘More information?’

‘Dog vaccines, dog wormers, dog medicines generally.’

‘Tested on animals?’

I nodded sagely. ‘I think there’s a pretty good chance.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’

I gawped at her. ‘Well, there’s not much point in testing a dog wormer on humans, is there? They’re animal products, Gabriel. Designed for animals. I think there’s going to need to be a bit of testing on animals, don’t you?’

She eyed me searchingly for a moment, then her gaze shot back to the pages in her lap. ‘None of these I’ve even heard of, soooo, let’s move on to Brisbane.’

‘Can we? It’s much warmer there.’

She ignored me. ‘Explain this one. BCM Advertising, Brisbane. Sunny Queen Eggs.’ Her eyes shot back to mine accusingly and I think I flushed. She smiled darkly. ‘Tell me about Sunny Queen Eggs, monkey.’

‘It’s just an account I worked on freelance for a while,’ I said dismissively.

‘And what do Sunny Queen Eggs do?’

‘They make eggs, Gabriel.’

‘What kind of eggs?’

‘Hens’ eggs.’

‘What kind of hen’s eggs?’

I smiled. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Free range, barn or battery?’

I laughed. ‘All of them. I did one campaign, Gabriel, that was all—’

‘And what was that campaign for?’

‘Eggs!’

‘What kind of eggs?’

‘The cheap ones, all right?’

‘The battery ones, Bailey.’

‘Yes, Gabriel, the battery ones!’

She sat back like a prosecution lawyer who’d just winkled the vital admission out of a frazzled defendant. Had there been an audience lining the Court Room pews, there would surely have been a buzz of whispers. Clearly the only one who was going to come to my defence was me.

‘I know how it looks, but it’s my job. I can’t just—’

‘It’s my fucking father’s job too!’

‘Yes, but I’m not in there hot wiring chicks faces off, am I? I only wrote one ad!’

‘Did the ad go well?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I told you. It was a freelance job. I was there for a week and I was gone. I got the job at McCarthy’s while I was there and I didn’t even think about it after that!’

‘All right. Let’s just assume the ad went well – you are good at what you do, aren’t you?’

‘Reasonably.’

‘Let’s just assume it caused a bit of a run on eggs.’

‘I hope it didn’t.’

‘But it probably did, Bailey. Let’s be honest.' She cocked her head and eyed me cynically.'Unless, of course, you deliberately tried to write a bad ad. Did you try to write a bad ad?’

‘I never try to write a bad ad. I only ever try to write good ads.’

‘Ads that sell?’

‘Yes, Gabriel, ads that sell. Ads that keep me in a job.’

‘Which came first?’

‘The chicken or the egg?’

‘Don’t be facetious. The ad or the article?’

I flushed. ‘Which article?’

‘Don’t stall, Bailey. You know exactly which article I’m talking about. And I don’t even need to ask again. I can see it in your eyes.’

I shrugged and Gabriel's face morphed into a picture of drop-jawed disgust.

‘You wanker.' she hissed. 'You two faced wanker.’
I swallowed hard and did my level best to maintain eye contact as the flush began to burn my cheeks. ‘What can I say? The dust had settled. The money was there...to be had.’

Gabriel slammed a tiny fist on the bar, the sharp clank of metal bracelets drowning out any discernible thud uncontested. ‘How?' she yelled. 'How? With all you knew! The way you feel about animals! And birds! How can you live with yourself?’

My chin shrunk back into my neck in a turkey-like motion and I grimaced at her. ‘That’s a harsh way of putting it.’

‘It’s the only way of putting it!' she said, eyes wide and blazing, then narrowing to hateful slits as she collapsed into a slouched, toothy scoff in the general direction of my heart. 'How can you even dare to criticise my father? You’re a fucking hypocrite!’

That hurt. And I let her live with me in that hurt for a moment as my eyes went from hers to my hands, then lost themselves in walls, before finding their way back to my hands. ‘How can I,' I said, tone low and measured as my flush danced into the hotter, more practiced embers of indignance, 'get it through to you that an inbuilt talent for hypocrisy is a crucial prerequisite of my job.’

‘How can I,' Gabriel said mimicking my measured tone in an octave not nearly as condusive to measured tones, 'get it through to you that any right-minded person would have a problem with that.’

‘That’s not the point,' I said,’ enjoying the mimicked measure, but knowing it wouldn't last.

‘It’s entirely the point!' she screamed, perhaps one exchange earlier than I'd hoped and I winced. 'You’re lying, Bailey! You’re lying to yourself! You’re lying to me! And, worse, you’re lying to the chickens!’

‘No!' I said, measure now tablespoons rather than teaspoons. 'I am a professional who doesn’t let personal opinions interfere with his work! What’s the difference between me and a lawyer who defends a rapist knowing he’s guilty?’

‘Sadly, nothing!’ said Gabriel now dealing in quarts.

‘Okay, bad example,' I said with a far from measured swig of beer as a teaspoon of sugar sprinkled itself liberally about my consciousness and an argument that may just go down formed. 'If,' I said placing my Stella back on the bar mat with exaggerated delicacy, 'I took my morals to work every day, I wouldn’t be able to write a single ad.’ I let this sour sweetener dissolve in her vast vat of indifference, then continued. ‘Half, maybe three quarters of the ads I’ve ever written have been for things I am either personally opposed to or utterly bored by. Very rarely have I got a brief I can honestly say this is my true passion. So I have to manufacture that passion, Gabriel. Time after time after time! I have to manufacture an interest, not just a passing interest, a genuine interest in something I find either abhorrent or tedious. And, if I may say so, that is a talent in itself. Stay there, I want to show you something.’

Leaving her to brood into her vodka, I crossed the court room to a filing cabinet and returned with a sheet of A4 paper. I sat back in the judge’s chair, brandished the sheet.

‘This, my mighty midget, is the original entrance exam for the New Zealand Ideas School, a creative course run by the advertising industry for new people wanting to break into advertising, a course I applied for many years ago. Seven questions. The best twelve applicants got into the class. Three hundred applied. I was one of the twelve who got in.’

‘Good for you,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Read the first question.’

I handed the sheet across with my thumb on the spot and she read from her lap. ‘Question one: As creatively and convincingly as you can, explain why it is important to retain our historic buildings.’ She looked up.

‘Right. Now read the second question.’

She looked down. ‘Question two: As creatively and convincingly as you can, explain why it is not important to retain our historic buildings.’ She looked up. ‘That’s rubbish.’

‘What’s rubbish?’

‘Question two’s rubbish.’

‘Because your personal opinion is that we should retain historic buildings.’

‘Of course.’

‘So you could create a clever and convincing argument for that?’

‘I don’t know about clever. But yes. It’s an obvious argument.’

‘What about question two?’ I asked, relieved to be dueling in teaspoons again.

‘No way,' she said.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s wrong! It’s morally bankrupt!’

This was a decidedly heaped teaspoon. ‘I don’t know about morally bankrupt,' I said tapping as much as I could back in the jar. 'Not retaining our old people would be morally bankrupt. But the difference between you and me is that, while I agree with you in principle, I was able to shelve my personal opinions, no matter how strong, and write an equally convincing counter argument.’

‘I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.’

‘It helped get me into the course. That was the first thing they wanted to know – Am I a charlatan?’

‘I’m glad you said it,’ said my sweet and sour pork, any concept of a a few turns on the rotisserie now as dwindling as the flame in her flickering eyes.
‘I admit it!' I said, metaphoricaly licking fingers and dousing any desires completely for the night. 'That’s me! I’d advertise cigarettes if there was a quid in it! You can’t, of course because cigarette advertising’s banned in most countries. But I would. I’d advertise grog one week and do a Drink Drive campaign the next! Advertising is about taking opportunities, Gabriel, every opportunity as it comes along. Because if you don’t, someone else will. And it will be them who writes an award-winning ad that wins Clios and gets them headhunted into a two hundred K job.’

‘Is that what you made endorsing battery hens?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I made!’

‘Yes, it does! I want to know how much you sold your soul for!’

‘If you think you can do better, go out and get a fucking proper job!’

‘I have got a proper job!’

‘And how much is that paying? Oh, that’s right – it’s not paying anything because you’re not meeting your budgets!’

If looks could kill, this would have been a very short story. ‘Fuck you, you four eyed wanker!’ she yelled. ‘I’m going to watch television!’ With that, she slid off her stool, snatched her vodka and marched off downstairs.

Moments later Kurt and Courtney got up from the fire and filed after her past the bar. I gaped down at them. ‘Where are you going?’

They said nothing, just glanced up at me and kept walking right out the door.

‘Take sides, why don’t you!’ I called after them. ‘You don’t even know what I’ve done!’ Then to myself: ‘I don’t even know what I’ve done.’

Then when it was clear neither Kurt nor Courtney nor Gabriel were coming back, I yelled: ‘I’ve got a job interview tomorrow!’ trailing off with a muttered, ‘You bastards.’

Grumbling into my beer fridge I called time on Happy Hour ten minutes early and, with the fire now roaring, the caffeine-high cockroaches still rattling about the cake tin, and the most humiliating job interview of my life looming just one sleep away, I introduced an entirely new, spare of the moment concept in Court Room bar promotions – Solo Sink Em Til You Drop Sit Ins.