Busy In The Fog: Further Adventures of Grafton Everest

By Ross Fitzgerald

Busy in the Fog is a wildly funny sexual-political romp which will amaze, delight, annoy and almost certainly offend. Grafton Everest is now at his wit’s end facing life in his gluttonous middle age. Forced to deal with unexpected changes in his wife Janet, their allegedly gifted child Lee-Anne, and in his supposedly academic place of work, Grafton passes through episodes of ‘spiralling, phobic anxiety’. The novel has more than its share of terrorists, religious ratbags, free enterprise maniacs and right and left-wing zealots.

"Utilising a lethal wit, Fitzgerald’s writing ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime . . . it is brilliantly hilarious." Time Out, London

"Grafton Everest . . . a slob making Les Patterson seem a class act. Broad comedy, very rude and, for anyone liking gleefully scabrous humour, very funny as well." Daily Mail, London

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ross Fitzgerald
• Release date: Apr 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9780987325334

Ross Fitzgerald

Ross Fitzgerald (born 1944) is an Australian academic, historian, novelist, secularist, and political commentator. Author of 36 books, in 2009 Professor Fitzgerald co-authored "Made in Queensland: A New History", published by University of Queensland Press and also "Under the Influence, a history of alcohol in Australia", published by ABC Books. In 2010 Professor Fitzgerald published "My Name is Ross:An Alcoholic's Journey" and "Alan ('The Red Fox') Reid", both published by New South Books. In 2011, he co-authored "Austen Tayshus:Merchant of Menace", published by Hale & Ironmonger, Sydney, and "Fools' Paradise: Life in an Altered State", published by Press On/Arcadia in Melbourne. Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Brisbane's Griffith University, he was also the Queensland Chair of the Centenary of Federation. His books include five works of fiction: "Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment"; "All About Anthrax"; "Busy in the Fog: Further Adventures of Grafton Everest"; "Fools' Paradise: Life in an Altered State" ; and "Soaring". Fitzgerald currently writes a regular column for The Weekend Australian and reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Weekend Australian and The Canberra Times. He appears on ABC Radio, ABC Television, and Channel 7 in Australia.

Book preview

1 Enlightenment

Words are the poor boy's arsenal.

Saul Bellow

Janet had had enough.

For comfort, Grafton Everest looked at his cock, again. He found little of interest there. Wearily, he ate three slices of buttered toast and strawberry jam, then gulped down some milk coffee from the thermos by his side.

I'm married to a woman who has come to feminism at forty, when others have had the brains to give it away. Even now, she's not as compliant as she used to be. What a bloody travesty. What am I going to do? My body's falling to pieces. Life is a daily trial. I'm putting on so much weight, I reckon I'll have a heart attack. I need to take stock of my life, find some meaning.

Still in bed, he uncrossed his massive legs, unplugged the auto-dial telephone, tried to relax. What did the instructor say? ‘We don't try to meditate, we let it happen. Say the mantra, innocently.’

Innocently, my arse, thought Grafton Everest, PhD. All I can think about is escaping Queensland. And screwing Annie. Even that's fraught with difficulties. Herpes, AIDS, chlamydia. I read in yesterday's Courier that these days having sex is like leaping to one's death. It also said that forty-four per cent of koala bears have got chlamydia. It's incurable. ‘But the koala isn't a bear. It's a marsupial,’ he growled.

‘I can't even remember my mantra’, Grafton complained to Che, the elderly Burmese who still kept her distance. ‘What the fuck is it? Ha Ring. That can't be right.’

‘Thank God that child's at school,’ Grafton added, eating homemade rissoles from his breakfast tray. ‘I nearly forgot to take my Digesic.’

Grafton sat propped up downstairs, answerphone and clock radio by his bedside table. His fully remote control Toshiba twenty-four inch TV sat on a cabinet at the end of his bed. He flicked on the midday news, which was halfway through. The reader, in a sing-song voice, announced: ‘Early this morning a sixty-year-old Brisbane man nearly suffocated when he fell in a quicksand pit while trying to catch his runaway cockatoo.’

The bulletin crossed live to bimbette reporter Anna Fawkes, knee-deep in mud near the scene. ‘I'm standing ten metres from where William Taylor, a labourer, here at Hoyland Street, Bald Hills, was chasing his pet bird over these mud flats when he sank into quicksand. He clawed his way to the surface and was able to hold on until help arrived. The cockatoo escaped. Back to you, Ken.’

‘A Biloela farmer warned last night that daylight saving would contribute to a higher divorce rate in Queensland,’ said Brisbane Channel Seven's second newsreader, Ken Lunch. Behind him a TV graphic hovered in the air. ‘Prophet’ rings alarm.

‘Mr Len Powlett said he had experienced daylight saving in South Australia. People get frazzled, he told a public meeting at Biloela.’

The camera cut to the Biloela Cattlebreeders' Association Hall. Squinting from under his Akubra hat, the wiry grazier, wearing an R. M. Williams ensemble, said, ‘The kiddies won't sleep, so it puts pressure on the parents, then they get stressed. And more leisure time means more drinking time. And that brings problems too. Sooner or later there's conflict in the family and up goes the rate of marital breakdowns. While I was living in South Australia I noticed retailers were not as helpful during daylight saving periods.’

When the live-cross was over, Ken Lunch said, ‘Like so many things, it looks like the effects of daylight saving can't be measured by statistics.’

‘What bullshit!’ said Grafton. ‘Why did we ever move to Queensland? Life up here is a pile of crap.’

‘The University of Minnesota today announced that sixty-nine thousand million acts of sexual intercourse are performed annually in the world. Every second, somewhere, one thousand nine hundred males ejaculate more or less simultaneously; in every ejaculation there are three hundred million sperm.’

‘Jesus,’ said Grafton. ‘I bet there aren't in mine!’

‘A suspected earth tremor was reported by residents of Esk and Kilcoy, north-west of Brisbane, this morning.’ The camera panned over a few isolated south-east Queensland farmhouses in their usual state of dilapidation.

‘Police said houses in the area shook for five seconds at approximately seven am. Apart from outhouses, no buildings were damaged except a windmill at ex-Premier Henderson's Angora goat farm near Toogoolawah and the sauna at the Wivenhoe Dam's Exclusive Executive Restaway Resort. ’

A picture of the opulent resort came up on screen.

‘A South African businessman, Daniel du Toit, forty-nine, collapsed and died after choking on a peppermint, minutes after delivering a speech on the need to live for the moment,’ said newsreader Alan Dumpster.

‘Isn't life precarious?’ said Grafton to the cat.

‘"In southern Tanzania, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, a lion has eaten fourteen villagers, including the local game warden.’

‘What did I tell you?’ said Grafton.

‘Australian sultanas, raisins and currants contain fifteen per cent more lactose and fructose than dried fruits from other countries.’

‘Now for the weather. Brisbane will stay hot and humid, an afternoon thunderstorm is . . .’

Grafton flicked off the instrument. A great fatigue enveloped him. Acting on T. S. Eliot's dictum that life should contain as few surprises as possible, he took to his bed, again.

‘True gloom is by nature groundless,’ he said, quoting Gunter Grass. ‘But this humidity is overpowering. I won't take it!’ he screamed to the cat. ‘You are looking at someone who will not take the weather lying down.’

o | o

‘What am I going to do?’ he said to Janet as she was leaving to teach an afternoon class at the local Technical and Further Education College. ‘I'm nearly forty. I can only start from where I am,’ he read to her from his ‘Just for Today’ booklet.

‘But you're still in bed,’ his wife said, direct as ever. It was almost one o'clock. ‘My career projectile is going as planned, my love. When I finish my MA in Fibre Art, I can get a full-time job at Toowoomba. And you can stop lecturing at Bowen. You could even learn some skills.’

‘Fibre Art!’ lamented Grafton. ‘What a lot of wankers. Why don't they call it weaving?’

‘I have to proceed with this,’ Janet said. ‘We've got to leave Brisbane. It's my turn. I'm sick of being subordinate. My career is important. As well as which, we owe it to Lee-Anne. That's why we're moving.’

This news went through Grafton like a bout of dysentery. Sell the house! Leave Brisbane! Go to Toowoomba! How will I be able to cope? he thought. How absurdly unfair to be told what to do by this woman, who was only slightly older than he was and who had only recently come to feminism.

‘Don't forget to do the dishes and make sure Lee-Anne eats some green vegetables,’ Janet instructed as she left for work.

‘The revolution has finally penetrated my house,’ he lamented to the cat. ‘What's worse, it's not mine. She owns everything. I don't even possess a toothbrush!’

o | o

Grafton opened the Features section of last weekend's Weekend Australian: Under ‘Logos: New Voice of the Right’, one paragraph took his eye: ‘The militant right-wing Christian group, the Logos Foundation, which has its headquarters in Toowoomba, aims to mount a conservative takeover of Australia. About ninety families this week moved from the Blue Mountains to the Darling Downs as part of the foundation's public aggressive phase in its pro-life, pro-family, anti-abortion political campaign. The Foundation has bought the adjoining Toowoomba and Coachman motels for use as a biblical college and base. The estimated cost is eleven million dollars.’

In another story he read that a second bomb had ripped through a busy Brisbane surgery, less than twenty-four hours after one exploded in a city shopping arcade: ‘A Queensland Police spokesperson said the spate of bombs was bewildering. Responsibility for the second bomb has been claimed by a hitherto unknown group calling itself the Queensland Committee of the Order and the Covenant of the Sword.’

‘That's hardly news,’ Grafton said, adjusting his kapok pillows and half-watching TV with Che on his lap. ‘I feel so utterly alone. They almost never want my political commentaries or opinions any more.’ When Janet comes home, she'll be weaving for her MA and won't pay any attention to me. ‘Fibre Art!’ screamed Grafton to the cat. ‘They'll soon be awarding MAs for farting! Jesus, perhaps they are.’

Janet was off to Toowoomba next Saturday. Another weekend course. ‘Everything's changing — for the worse,’ he moaned. ‘We're moving. And when we get there, I'll have to look after Lee-Anne. She's so demanding.’

‘At least now we’re alone,’ Grafton said to Che as he finished off his lunch of pâté, and a cheese omelette, which he'd had to prepare himself. ‘Thank God that child's away! It's almost like the old days.’ Che purred. ‘I mustn't forget my tablets,’ Grafton said, giving the cat some pâté and taking two more Digesics. ‘Why aren't I dreaming?’ he asked the Burmese. ‘Or, more precisely, why aren't I remembering my dreams?’ He was seeing two therapists — Dr Adrian Auchenflower, a neo-Freudian psychiatrist, three times a week, and Annie the Transcendental Meditation counsellor as often as he could arrange it. Grafton would be forty on Christmas Day. It didn't seem auspicious.

Searching for inspiration, he picked up his late father's battered large-print Bible and turned to Ecclesiastes 4:2: ‘But how can one be warm alone?’ The writer hadn't lived in foetid Queensland.

Grafton hoped there'd be a letter today from Mr Horton in Melbourne. Blind in one eye, his old biology teacher and 4C form master, now retired from Forest Hill High, faxed Grafton regular missiles of avuncular advice, using his Apple 2A word processor.

o | o

‘People are spreading rumours at Bowen about me,’ he said petulantly when his wife returned, slightly late. These days she often kept him waiting, which he loathed. ‘They're jealous that I'm head of department, while Abe's in charge of the press. How were your dreary students at C Block?’ he asked, trying unsuccessfully to forget himself. ‘Weaving up a storm?’

‘Fine, my love. At least if everyone is talking about you they're leaving someone else alone,’ Janet said. She poured herself a cup of coffee and a glass of flavoured milk for Grafton.

‘I had a terrible dream last night,’ Grafton whined. ‘I was in a huge bed, and I couldn't get out of it — ever. I took it as a sign, a bad sign. I suppose in one way I'd love to be an invalid. Did you know an Englishwoman in Madras was entitled to a pension from the moment of her birth?’ he said, suddenly animated.

Grafton reached for the Daily Bulletin: ‘Miss Millicent Barclay, daughter of Col. William Barclay was born on 10 July 1872 after her father passed away and became eligible for an Indian Military Fund pension to continue until her marriage. She died unmarried on 26 October 1969 having drawn the pension every day of her life: ninety-seven years and three months,’ he read. ‘How about that?’

‘I think that's disgraceful,’ said Janet. ‘And sad. Poor woman — she never learned to work.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Grafton sullenly, remembering he was supposed to teach tomorrow. But it's as though I can't get out of bed. Actually I don't want to — if it means having to go to Bowen. The place is a madhouse. And I can't keep marking those dreadful essays. How long can I write, ‘Sensitive, clearly expressed, well argued. Augurs well. Very good!’ There's no point in failing anyone. The Assessment Evaluation Review Committee eventually passes them all. Every fuckwit college in Australia has been turned into a university. And my mother is coming — for a week. What about Che? Avis hates cats.’

‘Holy Toledo,’ said Janet as she passed Grafton his dieter's spinach and lemon juice luncheon snack. ‘I'd quite forgotten. You know, Lee-Anne and Che don't really like her. She's a difficult woman. Even though she's one thousand eight hundred kilometres away in South Caulfield, she's so critical!’

‘She doesn't make me happy,’ Grafton said. ‘But it's in my TM book: I don't strive after happiness. I strive after work. Nietzsche. What do you think of that? It was Delius's motto. He was a friend of Percy Grainger's,’ Grafton said. ‘Always on the move. Did you know that Nietzsche, Delius, and Grainger's mother all had the pox? I hate change,’ he said without monitoring her response. ‘Do you know when some woman asked a writer on the radio what he wrote, he said, I write sentences. Isn't that absurd?’

‘Most of them do,’ Janet said. ‘One after another. Which is more than you're doing at the moment.’

‘Don't be smart,’ Grafton said as Janet went down to her loom. I think that's unfair. Just because you're producing.’

Oh God, that dreadful child will be home from school soon. It's three o'clock, and I'm still not out of bed.

Even the cat's gone outside, thought Grafton as he switched on the radio. Since his novel — Going Out Backwards — was published, he hadn't written a word, not even a note to the milkman.

He reviewed his day. It had not been a success.

70 Canterbury Road

Highfield, Victoria 3126 (03 836 1949)

1 July 1990

Grafton 8

Dear Grafton

Going Out Backwards was a great success. With the aid of a magnifying glass I have read the first half carefully, the rest I skimmed. I shall re-read it in a day or two. I think it really very funny and well worked out. You have satirised your university to a T: everybody in the novel gets a serve, even my good self. If I didn't know the author but bought it on spec, I would put it on the book-shelves with favourite send-ups like Lucky Jim and Eating People is Wrong. But I have to confess to feeling a bit disoriented reading about a character with all sorts of recognisable gambits, talents and speech patterns. I think it was Graham Greene who said that he was sick of explaining to his friends that he did not put them in his novels, only bits of them, and he blended the bits to make a new persona. Actually, he doesn't have any friends now, but he can still remember enough bits for his next novel.

I cannot imagine what effect the book — especially when it is published in paperback — will have at Bowen. I don't know any of the people. But I doubt the premier will mind. He has a lot of fun, one way and another, in the book. I said that I have read the first bit carefully. On page 20, shouldn't the equitable Janet be the equable Janet? And it might make things easier, in your private life, if you distanced Janet a little more from your own excellent wife. This would not be hard to do.

Despite the biblical injunction not to put pen to paper (‘Would that mine enemy should write a book’) I am writing a book — about education, given its present parlous state — and I have contacted the director of your University Press, Abe Dreighton.

It is a bugger being stuck at Bowen, like a damned soul in Hell, but I think it is crucial to understand that, outside schools and universities, people like us are essentially unemployable.

Are people right when they say things are worse than they used to be? Can they be right? Are children worse mannered? Are there more ratbags? Do we have less national pride, will, achievement? Are women better looking? I do not trust my senses but, all the same, the gloomy prognostications of intellectuals in Lisbon in 1600 were actually right.

Look at England. How could the English have been so stupid as to invite blacks into the country? Are the hordes of Muslims, Rastafarians, Sikhs, Negroes and odds and sods grateful?

Right now, the radio is playing (until I turn it off in ten seconds) ‘Click Go the Shears’, with a didgeridoo accompaniment. Surely you knew that this was an Ab composition! Almost every evening lately the ABC and SBS have been showing programmes that explain that Abs invented, forty thousand years ago, everything known to us Anglo-Celts. They invented the differential and integral calculus before Isaac Newton, although there seems to be no Ab word (in any of the