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to reading his writings, or hearing audio recordings of himself as a youth, was always one of shock. God, how different he sounded. What a twerp he was. It was disconcerting to realise that if he were to meet his younger self today, he would despise him. Even his physical appearance was annoying – a tall skinny beanpole with shoulder-length hair, grinning out from behind huge glasses, exuding arrogant confidence. Whereof sprang this swagger, this smug certainty?

      I remember now, thought Grafton. I thought I was going to be successful.

      It was true. He, as a young man, had shown much promise. He had succeeded academically and even showed potential to be a professional cricketer – if he put some effort into actually playing. He had seen himself as starting on a journey that would culminate in fame, wealth and world-wide admiration. A Nobel Prize was not out of the question. Of course, how exactly that fame, wealth and admiration were going to be achieved he had never worked out. He had never made any sort of plan; he had just assumed success would happen of its own accord.

      At the same moment he realised the irony of the fact that, in a sense, it had. He was about to become the first President of the Republic of Australia, so why didn’t he feel that his youthful expectations had been fulfilled? Probably, he mused, sitting among his juvenilia, because he had had nothing to do with it. He had been made Premier of Queensland without ever wishing to be; he had been elected to the Senate without even knowing and had been made the Chair of the Eminent Person’s Group (whose apostrophe came before the ‘s’ because he was its only member) without ever seeking to. Now he had been appointed President on the basis of statements that he had never made so, in a sense, his blithe presumption that fame would occur of its own free will had turned out to be true. He was not only a President Presumptive but also a President Presumptuous!

      Does it really matter how one succeeds? he wondered as he reclosed and stacked up the cartons. Perhaps famous people only ever succeeded through the efforts of others – standing on the shoulders of giants, as Newton modestly said, perhaps even pushing them down into the mud. But he still had misgivings; he was pretty sure most people who won the Nobel Prize had actually done something, discovered something, written something, invented something that was world-changing. That was it. World changing. You had to do something that changed the world, even slightly. Perhaps that was the Work that he had yet to complete – or even start on.

      ‘Memories are depressing,’ he said to himself and went downstairs, certain that there had to be some skerrick of food left in the kitchen even if it were just a ten-year-old tin of sardines.

       Chapter 3

       All we adults have this unspoken agreement that childrenare lunatics.

      – Stephen King

      The next day, Grafton was sitting with his head clamped into a kind of torture device while an ophthalmologist shone a locomotive headlight into his eyes. The torturer’s face was so close to his that Grafton was sure that he felt the doctor’s nose hairs brush his cheek.

      There are some cultures, thought Grafton, where if this doctor were female, we would be forced to get married after contact as intimate as this.

      After what seemed like an hour of looking up, down, sideways and around in a circle like an amazed jeweller examining the Cullinan diamond, the doctor leant back.

      ‘Hmmm,’ he said, which is the last thing a patient ever wants to hear. ‘The problem is not in the lens. There appears to be some bleeding on the retina.’

      ‘Reeding on the reddina?’ said Grafton, his jaw still clamped shut in the scold’s bridle. ‘Whass at mean?’

      ‘You can sit up,’ said the doctor. ‘It means just changing your glasses won’t fix it.’

      ‘So what will?’ asked Grafton, straightening up from the very uncomfortable position.

      ‘At this stage,’ said the doctor, ‘nothing.’

      ‘What’s the cause of it?’ Grafton was alarmed as all hypochondriacs are at finding there is actually something wrong with them.

      ‘It can be caused by high altitudes. You’re not a mountain climber, are you?’ said the ophthalmologist, making Grafton wonder if he was the one who was going blind.

      ‘No, I’m a devout Lowlander,’ said Grafton. ‘I get dizzy going up an escalator.’

      ‘Well, it’s probably hypertension.’

      ‘I do have rather a lot on my plate at the moment,’ said Grafton, wishing that were true in the literal rather than the metaphorical sense.

      ‘I don’t mean psychological tension. I mean, high blood pressure due to … well, being overweight for a start.’

      ‘So what can I do?’ said Grafton, now getting seriously worried.

      ‘Well, the reality is you’re going to have to massively reduce your food intake and you’ll have to start exercising frequently. Otherwise you could lose your vision entirely,’ the medico answered with finality.

       *

      ‘So what did the doctor say?’ asked Janet when Grafton arrived home, depressed.

      ‘He said I’m going to go blind.’

      ‘Oh, well.’ Janet was now packing books into cartons in the living room. ‘It’s probably best to take precautions,’ she said.

      ‘He told me my condition is common among mountain climbers,’ said Grafton. ‘I told him the only heights I had ever scaled were the heights of absurdity.’

      ‘I’m sure he was concerned,’ said Janet, picking up another flattened carton from a stack and expertly folding it into a box.

      ‘Gerard Manly Hopkins once said: “The mind has mountains”,’ observed Grafton in his characteristic tangential way.

      ‘I don’t think mental mountains count.’ Janet was now casting her eye over the increasingly barren room.

      ‘So what are we doing with all this stuff?’ asked Grafton, worried at seeing all their familiar possessions disappear in a kind of cardboard black hole.

      ‘Most of it goes into storage, my darling. We can only take personal items.’

      This peeved Grafton. He regarded everything as a personal item. He was used to their furniture and drapes, carpets and plates and cutlery. Especially the plates and cutlery, which he regarded as old friends. God knows what strange and alien china they would be eating off in the former Governor-General’s residence. He was repulsed by the idea of sleeping on a bed or eating off plates that had been used by ten former Heads of State. It was going to be like living in the St Vincent de Paul warehouse.

      As he silently sulked, Janet continued, ‘I’m only keeping out a few things that Lee-Anne and Wayne might want. They’ll be staying at a hotel for the first few weeks until the Inauguration and then they’ll join us at Yarralumla. They’ve assured me the guest wing will be ready by then.’

      ‘Who has?’ said Grafton, surprised that Janet had had some contact with someone about the matter.

      ‘The head housekeeper.’

      ‘You contacted them?’

      ‘They contacted me. They wanted to know what our requirements are.’

      ‘I didn’t even know we had requirements.’ Grafton felt, as usual, that he had missed some meeting in which vital information had been dispensed.

      ‘Well, you, for example, need a king-size bed,’ said Janet.

      ‘Do I? I’ve always wanted a king-size bed …’

      ‘Well, now you’re going to get one.’

      ‘Wait,’ said Grafton. ‘Do you mean that anything we want they’re going to get for us?’

      ‘Correct,’ said Janet, responding to his look

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