Iraqi Icicle

by Bernie Dowling

  ‘Steele Hill.’

  It was a soft voice, pretending to be hard. I looked up. She was young, too young, not more than twenty. I like my dole public servants at least ten years older, well into their world-weary routine: ‘Steele, we both know there are no jobs out there, but we gotta do this bureaucratic bullshit. So let’s get it over and done with. Then it’s on your bike, Steele. You don’t mind me calling you Steele, do you, Steele?’

  That routine I like.

  But with the youngies, you never know. Holy Buddha, some of them can be ambitious – dreams of being first secretary, or whatever the chief head kicker is called.

  I was at a dangerous age myself. When you are approaching twenty-seven, some stiffs out there think you can still be rehabilitated into a useful member of society, whatever that is. This young woman might be one of the rehabilitators.

  Let’s not forget that rockers Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who will probably all live forever, died at age twenty-seven. It’s a spooky age, one you need to brace yourself against and get over. If I have a child, I will tell them to beware the age of twenty-seven: it is the modern Ides of March. Must remember to ask my mate the Gooroo what Ides are.

  I did notice the young public servant had a useful pair of sleek legs under the Business Orthodox grey skirt, topped by a white blouse and a lilac jacket. With shoulder pads. For packing down in the Man’s maul.

  I walked towards the little gate they have in dole offices, there to assure you that you are up for a stroll along the garden path to grandma’s house. She opened gran’s gate for me.

  ‘I’m Kathy Billings, Mr Steele. I’m your review officer.’ A little smile appeared on her perfectly groomed face, for about a half-second.

  My review officer. My review officer. You can’t go through life without collecting personal property, even when you don’t want it.

  I looked into her eyes. No sign of recent drug or alcohol abuse. The absence of drug taking might not be as bad as you first think. Sure, druggies may not give a shit; maybe even fancy themselves as rebels with blue pens. But they can turn on you in a flash, too. ‘Pleased to meet you, Kathy,’ I said, sticking out my right hand.

  I was born left-handed, but the nuns at the orphanage decided that it was one of the marks of Satan. Satan left so many marks around the orphanage you had to wonder if he was any good at all at his chosen career of soul-stealing. The nuns performed a prolonged exorcism on my left-handedness. I won’t go into the details, but it worked.

  ‘Come into my office,’ Kathy Billings said, with a generous sweep of her left hand.

  My office tinkled a little warning. There was that possessive again.

  She had barely settled behind her huge desk and pointed me to a chair before she plunged into the heart of the matter. ‘Four years and four months, Mr Steele.’

  I pretended to rack my brain to place the anniversary, but I knew what the time span meant, right enough. ‘That long,’ I said after a bit. Kathy Billings gave me her blankest look. I followed up. ‘It’s Hill; Steele is my first name.’ Now humour to throw her well-laid strategy into a spin. ‘Don’t believe those people who say “Steal” is my middle name.’

  Kathy Billings was not deterred from her plan by my tactics. ‘I won’t lie to you, Mr Hill. A few of our clients have been receiving unemployment benefit for longer. But, for someone as young as you, four years and four months without gainful employment suggests that something is wrong.’

  Well, it depends on your point of view. Things had gone wrong and things had gone right during those four years and four months. Things could start to go really bad if she had an idea that a stretch without the dole might rehabilitate me. It’s not just the meagre dollars; life gets complicated when you have to start explaining what it is that you do. The taxman starts looking up your number, and you feel the need to justify your existence. “Unemployed” is simple, self-explanatory.

  When Kathy hit me with the empathy card, I began to sweat just a drop or two. ‘I’m not here to judge you; I’m here to help you,’ she said.

  The help this tidy little office woman had in mind was not the painless continuation of my unemployment benefit. No, she was devising a much more convoluted strategy to achieve what straights would consider a desirable outcome. ‘Looking through your file,’ she said. Nothing more, as if the phrase said it all. She let me stew for a few seconds.

  I blame the eighties for the strategic thinking of youth of the nineties. Blame the eighties for every bad thing of the nineties and you can’t go far wrong.

  In the eighties, Melbourne rocker Jo Jo Zep sang about his baby getting him in the shape he was in. Jo Jo – not Joe Camilleri’s real name, how’d you guess? – unknowingly predicted how that greedy, grasping, guzzling decade would have the young adults of the nineties all bent out of shape, trying to squeeze through the keyhole into the room of treasures. The kids of the nineties wanted it all, but were not sure why.

  In 1991, Michael Stipe of American indie rock band R.E.M. – Random Equivocal Meanderings – no, I just made that up – sang a song with meaningless lyrics about losing religion, which most of us took to mean that the pursuit of fame and fortune had no meaning. Being in the spotlight he had lost faith. If we fans weren’t so stoned and up ourselves, we would have realised that we had never been in the spotlight, and whether or not we gave up Godbothering wasn’t a big deal to anyone else.

  In Mick Stipe’s industry, losing religion was a minority position. Other aspiring pop stars sang it out loud that they were born again, to endear themselves to the legions of young, record-buying Christians. In my book, losing, finding or maintaining religion is best done in the privacy of your own church or home. It is just plain ugly as a spectator sport.

  REM’s lead singer mused on whether he had said too much, but Mick had said just enough to shove the band into the mainstream of the emerging nineties, where angst held hands with the ambition born in the eighties.

  From 1987, a monstrous heap of documentation had evidently been assembling itself on the subject of yours truly. I should have been flattered but I was the ungrateful type. Ms Billings produced my unemployment bio triumphantly from a filing cabinet behind her desk. She pretended to thumb through the dozens of pages.

  ‘One of the problems you have, Mr Hill, is one of identity. There is no birth certificate on file; no record of your parents’ details. In the circumstances . . .’

  This was low, trying to bust me on a technicality. But, as the Chinese say, my crisis of identity may have an opportunity enfolded within it. ‘I’m an orphan,’ I said, and was pleased to see the public servant lower her eyes in an appropriate display of mild discomfort. ‘You’ll see my bank accounts and my licence, and where I changed my name by deed poll when I left the orphanage.’

  ‘Why did you change your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Unpleasant memories,’ I said glumly. There was not much truth in that, but it was a good angle in this situation. One of the first things I saw on release from the orphanage was a billboard down the street. In large print on that board, a company fancied itself as The Big Australian, and below were the words Broken Hill Steel. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and it came to me that a name like Steele Hill would give me an edge on the street. I reckon it has too – some of the time.

  You don’t want to know what name the nuns gave the foundling who became Steele Hill. Even if you do, I don’t want to tell you.

  Being John Lennon’s lovechild, I could have given myself the old man’s name. But it rhymes with lemon, and my old man John met a decidedly sour end. Imagine there’s no creeps with guns. It’s not easy, even if you try.

  The public servant lowered her head closer to the documents, scanning for evidence of who I was. ‘You have never married, Mr Hill?’

  Innocent as charged. I raised my ringless fingers towards Kathy Billings to indicate my singular marital status. The love of my life – Natalie, My Cucumber, – lives in the same block of flats as I do,
but we could never be an official couple without my losing my public subsidy. Marriage vows could not be accommodated in my social compact with the government of the day, whose protocols would not allow the payment of my unemployment benefit if I could be construed as Natalie’s spouse.

  Besides, if I married Natalie, I might gain a dangerous in-law in the shape of Nat’s younger sister Jane. Bub collected trouble as easily as another hobbyist might gather model cars.

  ‘Even if we accept the bona fides of your identity, we have the problem that you cannot get work in your field,’ Ms Billings said. ‘Your occupation is listed as bookmaker’s clerk.’

  I agreed being a bookie’s clerk was my vocation.

  ‘That’s the gambling industry, isn’t it, not someone who publishes books? The gambling industry is booming at the moment.’

  I sighed. ‘It must be on my file. I’ve been warned off every racetrack in Australia. I can’t work in my profession. I couldn’t get the dole for twelve weeks because of it.’

  ‘Warned off?’ Kathy Billings asked for clarification, as she rummaged through my bulky file. Before I could answer, she found another notation. ‘It says something here about “failure to comply with a stewards’ inquiry”. Can you explain this, Mr Hill?’

  ‘It’s all a little bit complicated, Kathy. It still upsets me. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night reliving it.’

  She nodded – kept nodding, in fact. The nods said, ‘Go on, and tell me a few lies. I’ve got all the time in the world.’

  I opened with self-righteousness. ‘I’ve got no time for crooks on a racetrack. My job is to take bets, so where’s my percentage if the baddies are hustling me. Being warned off racecourses means not being able to enter any Australian track from Hobart to Home Hill.’

  Kathy had trouble finding a note of sympathy. ‘Must make work as a bookmaker’s clerk hard to come by,’ she said. Sarcastically.

  ‘No, look, Kathy. Every year I appeal. I know I’m this close to winning. My instincts tell me January next year is it.’

  ‘But what about this inquiry business? This all happened in 1986, more than five years ago, and your licence has not been reinstated since.’

  ‘I gave all the information I could. A horse was found to have been given a “go-fast”, and a couple of us innocents got caught in the net.’

  Her nods were getting faster, more impatient. But I was enjoying the story, as I do every time I tell one of my many versions of it. I pretended Kathy’s nods were keeping time to the rhythm of my gripping yarn. ‘I was doing what I was supposed to do, placing bets for people,’ I continued.

  She waited for me to go on, but I had finished. Kathy was exasperated. ‘Then, why did they warn you off?’

  This was not an opportune moment for the whole truth. The racing stewards could not understand my betting patterns, placing so much money on a seemingly hopeless horse. If professionals in the racing industry could not understand it, how could I possibly explain it to an outsider like Kathy Billings?

  ‘People lied about me,’ I said.

  True, because someone always tells lies about you, even if it’s out of ignorance rather than malice.

  ‘If what you say is true, and I do not doubt it, Steele . . .’ She paused, to silently tell me she didn’t believe a word. Which was fine by me, as she might be warming to an engaging liar. A lousy $150 a week dole is a small price to keep a good liar out there, engaging people.

  ‘ . . But why haven’t you considered retraining?’

  ‘I’ve done a couple of computer courses. I can use those skills inside or outside my trade.’

  I had done the courses, but the rest of it was 300 percent pure bullshit. Everyone on the dole with an IQ above sixty-five is sent on either computer or hospitality courses. Be on the dole long enough and you will do both. Would you like Microsoft Office with those fries? But there is no way I’m working with rotten computers. We just don’t get along, which is why I’ll probably never be a bookie’s clerk again. By the time they give me back my licence, every clerk will be recording bets on a computer instead of using a hand ledger as I was trained to do.

  My S.P. bookie mate, the Gooroo, despite his advanced years, loves those computers, the only fault I can find with him.

  Kathy Billings surely couldn’t deny that my computer courses were retraining. Retraining, in the eyes of the dole office, is the next best thing to employment. Maybe they pinched the model from Chairman Mao’s re-education programme. It seems more about presenting statistics to central office than finding your pesky dole bludgers employment. In the eyes of the seriously unemployed, such as me, retraining is a necessary evil to keep you on the dole.

  I would not like my flippancy to suggest I am a dole bludger. I have always supported the work ethic. The ethic has always been a basic part of me. However, my career has invariably involved alternative work, work that does not necessarily receive the social recognition it deserves.

  ‘Well, Steele, it boils down to this,’ Billings said and paused.

  At last, show us that card you have up your sleeve.

  ‘We are not entirely convinced that you are a willing work-seeker.’

  Go on, Kathy.

  ‘You are obviously reasonably intelligent, whatever your background. And you are still relatively young.’

  Relatively young, that’s rich from someone twenty going on fifty-five.

  ‘As you know, you have signed a contract with us, and it has penalties for non-compliance.’

  Come on, give us the sentence; I can’t plead mitigation until I receive your sentence.

  ‘Which is why, if I were you, I would seriously consider how I approached the job interview we’re sending you to.’

  Job interview! I almost burst out laughing. This was why I sounded so earnest. ‘You know, you have only sent me to four interviews the whole time I have been on the dole.’

  Which was true, and what horrific jobs they were. If I didn’t have a finely polished interview technique, I might have copped a bad report to the dole office from one of my prospective employers. Or worse, landed one of the jobs.

  I like a good job interview. It’s fun talking to jumped-up stiffs who pretend you are their equal, while deciding which loser gets to lick salt off the walls of their mine. All you have to do is show that you too regard them as equals, or, at least, not much inferior to you, and you have no show of landing the job.

  Later, you ask the stiffs for a written assessment of your interview. The least they can do is say nice things about you, considering how glad they are you will not be working for them. A copy of that assessment to the dole office secures your payment for twelve months or so, until another serious review comes your way. Sweet!

  That’s why they call it social security. The stiffs are secure in their offices and I jingle a few public coins in my pocket, secure on the Brissie and Gold Coast streets that I call home.

  I was sentenced to another job interview. Where was the pain?

  Ms Billings was about to tell me where the pain was. ‘We would be very surprised if you were not the most suitable candidate for this job, Mr Hill.’

  How flattering, but then flattery can be cover for sinister intent.

  ‘In fact, Mr Hill, we intend not to put this job vacancy on our noticeboards until after your interview.’

  This did not sound good. We both knew the odds: more than a million unemployed in a workforce of under ten million. Why give me the inside running when the equal employment racing rules say no runner will be hit with a go-fast needle at the expense of other competitors?

  Australia had been in recession for the best part of two years. This concerned me little, as I had been in and out of recession since the aftermath of the ’86 ‘fiasco’ when they warned me off. I was used to it.

  But stiffs perform badly under prolonged adversity. The treasurer of the good ship Australian Economy when she hit the recession reef was Paul Keating. While everyone was partying in the late 1980s, Keating
told all the stiffs he was the World’s Best Treasurer, and the prime minister of the day, Bob Hawke, seconded the motion.

  I could be wrong, but my understanding is that, in economics, you try to slow down the party when the economy becomes oversexed, or overheated, as the Puritans prefer to say. The World’s Best Treasurer upped the ante in 1989, slapping an 18 percent interest rate on the love-in. This might have played some part in hundreds of thousands of Aussies losing their jobs. As I say, I could be wrong about the economics of it all, but the record shows stiffs losing their jobs in droves in 1990 and 1991.

  I thought I was immune to the worst effects of the recession, but Kathy Billings seemed intent on kicking me off the dole. She probably figured that a stiff would be less creative in surviving without dole money than I. You could not fault that reasoning, but I was always a bench warmer in the game of economics, so why should I have to play, just because the team was copping a flogging. I felt for the stiffs, but if they did not get the shitty end of the financial digestive system, they wouldn’t be stiffs.

  With a clear and morally defensible objective of staying on the dole, I was keen to know the form of this job, this new obstacle between my goal and me. Kathy Billings handed me what appeared to be an oversized betting slip.

  It read, ‘Turfologist, Mr Caulfield Jones, Suite 4/116 Montague Rd, West End. Friday, 7:45 a.m.’ Kathy Billings giving me less than a day’s notice for the job interview was sus but better to get it done and dusted quickly as far as I was concerned.

  It sounded straight up enough, because only a hustler connected with horse racing would have the hide to set up a job interview before eight in the morning.

  The lovely Kathy (I have to admit, I do like them stern) let me puzzle over the cryptic slip of paper, which I laid on the desk. It wasn’t invited into my wallet until more information might let it lie comfortably inside the leather.

  The public servant took a larger card from her drawer. Ms Billings had the advantage when it came to props. She read from the card: ‘Turfologist requires a person to develop legitimate racehorse betting systems. Must be familiar with both horse racing and computers. Suit former bookmaker’s clerk. Wage: $300 plus commission. Start ASAP.’