The Brush-Off by Shane Maloney Page B

official?’ I asked. ‘With a taste for trad jazz and the French New Wave?’
    â€˜Financial services, actually,’ said Veale. ‘Started as a carpenter. Joined his father-in-law’s building firm back in the fifties, turned it into a major player in the housing industry, then sold up to concentrate on investment consulting.’ An ex-chippie made good. No wonder he got up Veale’s aristocratic nose.
    A large colour-field painting hung on the wall behind the minister’s desk. It was hard-edged, all surface, a bled-out pink with a broad stripe of yellow running right through the middle. Not unlike many in the party. Veale saw me looking over his shoulder and turned to follow my gaze. ‘Taste in pictures is such a personal matter,’ he said, as though he’d never seen the thing before in his life. ‘Does our master have a liking for something in particular?’
    Human blood, I nearly said. ‘Perhaps something to match his mental processes,’ I suggested.
    â€˜Nothing too abstract then, I take it,’ said Veale, cocking a jovial eyebrow. I had a feeling that he and I were going to get along like a house on fire.
    Veale left me alone with my homework. I took it over to the big desk and started in. As well as the National Gallery, the State Theatre and the Concert Hall, all of which I could see out the window, Arts was the overseer-in-chief of everything from the State Library to a regional museum so small the brontosaurus skeleton had to stick its neck out the window. All up, the annual budget topped forty million. Not in the major league by any means, but enough to have some fun with. And enough to generate some pretty vocal squabbling, if Ken Sproule was to be believed.
    The list of recent grant recipients revealed some familiar names. The Turkish Welfare League had scored a thousand dollars to run traditional music classes for Turkish Youth. In my experience, your average Turkish youth preferred heavy metal to Anatolian folk songs. Doubtless the dough would go to pay a part-time social worker. At the other extreme, the Centre for Modern Art had copped three hundred grand for a ‘one-off extraordinary acquisition’. I wondered what you could acquire for that sort of cash.
    I closed the folder. Plenty of time for that sort of thing later. Reminding myself of more pressing realities, I rang Agnelli and caught him on the way to Government House for the swearing-in of the new Cabinet. I told him about the Karlin brunch invitation, making it sound like a minor formality, and asked for his okay to decline. Right on cue, at the magic words ‘Max Karlin’, he was dead keen.
    â€˜It’s important that we maintain continuity of appointments during this transition,’ he said.
    â€˜You’re the boss,’ I told him.
    By then, it was just on five o’clock. I was feeling a little parched in the back of the throat, but it was ninety minutes before I was due to meet this Lloyd Eastlake bloke. I was flicking absently through the Centre for Modern Art annual report when Phillip Veale’s well-barbered mane appeared around the door. ‘Drinkie winkies?’ he mouthed.

I could tell immediately that I’d have to pull my socks up in the duds department if I ever hoped to cut the mustard in this culture caper. Aside from Phillip Veale’s two-tone shirt, I counted three bow ties, a pair of red braces and a Pierre Cardin blazer. And that was just what the women were wearing.
    All up, about fifteen people were milling about the conference room, enjoying what Veale described as the ministry’s customary end-of-week after-work convivial for staff and visiting clients. In no time at all, a glass of government-issue fizzy white had been thrust into my hand and the director had waltzed me about the room and presented me to sundry deputy directors and executive officers. The natives seemed affable enough and bid me welcome with the wary