The Grudge

This is Ted. We're out for our first walk in a week this morning. I've been spending a lot of time up at the hospital with mum. She's recovering well, but travelling back and forth between the hospital and home, going out to her place occasionally to pick my brother up, and dealing with the admin of what's happening, it all chews up a heap of time.

So, I haven't done a lot of exercise this week, and to be honest, I've done very little work either. This walk with Ted was one of the first moments I've really had to decompress. Please ignore his jaunty pink lead and harness. He's a very manly dog, very confident in his doggy manliness—so confident he can wear a bright pink lead and harness with complete confidence.

We had a nice walk down to the river, picked up a coffee, and just wandered around, really not thinking about much. It was probably because I was just letting my thoughts wander that a memory popped into my head—something I hadn't thought of in about 20 years or so. No idea why it occurred to me today, but I wanted to note it down. Once I've done so, you'll probably understand why.

As we took up our favoured park bench with my usual winter coffee order, I suddenly recalled the time I was the writer in residence at a big law firm in Brisbane. Indeed, it's one of the biggest law firms in the country, but I don't want to name them here for reasons that will become obvious soon enough—maybe for reasons we'll get to right now.

A friend who worked with this firm organised the residence for me shortly after we got back to Brisbane from a decade down south. I had nowhere to work in the house we were renting, but the firm was very generous, giving up an office to me. They could’ve put a lawyer in there billing two or three million dollars a year for them. Instead, they gave me that office for free for two years. I did a little bit of pro bono work for them. They had some community programs, a little bit of mentoring, as I recall, just some kids from underprivileged backgrounds who, for whatever reason, were interested in becoming writers or journalists or something. But honestly, I effectively got that room for free because my contribution was nothing compared to what they did for me. So, I remain very grateful for their generosity and graciousness.

It was only after I left the firm that I found out somebody tried to ensure it didn't happen. It wasn't anybody within the firm; it was a Brisbane journalist. Somebody who worked for Murdoch, that's all I'll say. I'm not going to identify this guy yet, and I'll explain why in a minute. But for some reason, he took it upon himself to reach out to the principals and argue strenuously that they shouldn't let me into the house. Apparently, he was absolutely red-hot on the issue. I have no idea why.

Happily for me, they ignored him, and I was able to sit there for two years writing the last two books in the first Axis of Time trilogy.

Once I’d finished my time there, and we moved into that house where we are now, where I had space to write, my friend who’d organised the residency for me came and told me the story of this Murdoch columnist who had reached out to the firm to try and get my residency yanked. She was as perplexed as me. She said, "Did you ever punch this guy out or something? I said, "No, I've never met him."

I had been profiled by him once. It was a reasonably anodyne profile, almost certainly during the publicity tour for Weapons of Choice, and I don't recall the piece he wrote being aggressive or hostile at all. Honestly, it was a puff piece, the sort of stuff you do during a media tour for a book.

He was a Murdoch columnist, and by that stage, I was writing a column for Fairfax, and maybe he just thought it was his duty to fuck with me. Anyway, it didn't work out for him, but it worked out quite well for me and, hopefully, for some of those kids I helped out.

For whatever reason, it all came back to me this morning, while I was out having my decompression walk with Ted. I'm just writing this here so I can set a reminder to come back to it and tell the full story with all of the names when he dies. I'm certain that if I did it now, he’d deny it and sue me for defamation.

But he knows who he is, and he knows what he did. I’d like him to know—because he's getting on in years and he won't be with us forever—that the day he dies, and I can confirm that in accordance with the Old Ways, the priests have cut off his head, filled the mouth with salt, and driven a stake through his heart—that I will tell the story of what he did, and he will have no recourse.