Harris, the Australian made good in England; Harris, a national treasure with his paintbrushes and his extra leg; Harris, harmless and asexual, chortling and whimsical, the light entertainer who had actually operated in darkness. Now, in court, was his Rick Rubin moment. Rubin produced the last, great records by Johnny Cash, turning his songs into high gothic. He had done the same with Neil Diamond. Harris, though, went further. His life was turned into high gothic, and the producer was Sasha Wass. Rubin made Cash and Diamond sound like their voices came from somewhere deep beneath the earth; Wass made Harris talk in frightened whispers.
She said, ‘You’re pretty good, Mr. Harris, aren’t you, at disguising the dark side of your character.’
‘Yes,’ he said. His voice was quiet and hoarse.
Wass said, ‘This case is about whether, under your friendly and loveable exterior, there is a dark side lurking. You know that, don’t you?’
The old, thin voice gasped, ‘I suppose so.’
2
It was his standard response: ‘I suppose so.’ It aimed for diffidence, but it didn’t quite get there; it was weak, lacking. I sat in court for two days and heard it over and over.
Much was made of a holiday to Australia in the 1970s. Harris travelled with his wife, Alwen, their daughter, Bindi, and Bindi’s best friend. The girls were 13. They went to the beach. Bindi’s friend had a swim, and came out of the water. She was wearing a flesh-coloured bikini. Harris came towards her with a towel. He put it around her. Also, according to Wass, he molested her.
A photo of the girl wearing the bikini was produced in court. Harris studied it. Wass said he had complimented the girl on the holiday, told her that she looked ‘lovely’.
‘Do you accept that when a man tells a woman or a girl they look lovely in a bikini, they are not actually admiring the clothing, they are admiring the person’s body?’
‘Possibly.’
‘You weren’t talking about the bikini,’ Wass said. ‘You didn’t mean the fabric. There’s not much of it. What you were saying was, “You have a great body.”’
The low gasp: ‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose so.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘To a 13-year-old. “You have a great body.” That’s what you were telling a 13-year-old.’
‘I suppose so . . .’
He denied there was any touching. Wass kept at it. She held out her hand, palm up. She said, ‘You digitally penetrated her.’
‘That didn’t happen.’
Her hand stayed where it was. ‘She says you put your hand inside her bikini pants, and digitally penetrated her.’
‘No.’
She continued to hold out her hand as she confronted Harris a third time, but this time she moved her middle fingers, thrust them forward, and said, ‘You fingered her.’
‘No.’
The obscene hand stayed where it was. Harris looked away. He started talking about how he wouldn’t have gone to her with a towel, that he didn’t spend much time at the beach, that he didn’t even like the beach. Photos were produced of the beach. You could see bright blue skies, golden sand, a jetty stretching out to sea — you could see all the beauty of Australia, the lucky country, its sun and surf and glowing light.
Another wildly successful expatriate, Clive James, talked about that light when he spoke at the Australia–New Zealand festival. James was giving what was billed as his farewell performance. He had leukaemia. He was dying, on the way out. He played to a full crowd who cheered and wept for the great prose stylist in his final hour of memoir, gags, and poetry. He said he was too unwell to return to Australia. It was a profound regret. He longed to see it one more time, to ‘bask in the light I never left behind’.
But Harris didn’t want to know about the light. He was a creature of shadows. ‘I hate sunbathing . . . I hate the sea . . . I don’t like the beach.’ His great distaste for spending any time there, he said, ruled out any possibility of molesting schoolgirls.
Wass ignored the logic of his argument, and said to the jury, ‘He would do this whether or not there were family members nearby. You will hear other instances in this case where Mr Harris touched children and women alike in quite brazen circumstances. Maybe that was part of the excitement for him, knowing that he could get away with it.’
Harris, said Wass, was ‘a sinister pervert’. How the old man with white hair would have envied James, his compatriot and near contemporary, not only because he was playing on the other side of the river to an audience who loved him. James was merely dying. Harris had it worse. He was being shamed in full view of the media.
The press sat in rows behind his wife and daughter. I approached Alwen Harris during an adjournment. The old dear was led to a ripped orange vinyl couch in a kind of lounge outside the courtroom. She was left by herself. It was a heartbreaking sight. I thought she could do with a friendly voice. I figured: we have a bond. Alwen was British, but her long marriage to Harris gave her an insight into the special relationship between New Zealand and Australia. She was in on the shared secret of life in the beautiful light of the Antipodes. I went over to her, and said, ‘I’m from New Zealand. Just wanted to say hi. Hang in there.’
She looked up and smiled. She was very frail. She didn’t seem quite all there.
3
Another Australian accused of serious sex crimes, half Harris’s age, was also more or less walking to the
