by Peter Barry
All he could afford was a rundown, one bedroom apartment. A threadbare, grey carpet that he would never be tempted to lie down on, covered the floor. Everything was in need of a lick of paint. The shower spluttered and dribbled, the gas fire didn’t even spark, and the oven and cooker looked to be at least fifty years old. Every apartment in the area was inhabited by young people, singles in the main, those who were starting out in their lives and still full of optimism and hope. Living amongst them made Hugh feel old and disillusioned.
A few weeks after moving, despite his loathing for the banks and a desire to have nothing to do with them, he made an appointment to see if he could borrow money to set up a new business venture. It was as if he was determined to fuel his hatred for the financial institutions with an almost certain rejection. But it could simply have been naïveté. Although he would have liked to open his own agency, perhaps for no other reason than that he felt he owed it to Fiona, the fact that he could no longer sign up Bauer, and the difficulties in the present economic climate of persuading any client to move, made such a venture unfeasible. Instead, he considered a provincial post office, as he and Kate had once talked about a long time ago.
Half way through stating his case to the local bank manager, Hugh realised that the man was smiling at him as if he considered his customer to be both delusional and pathetic. He asked Hugh for some numbers – how much he was paying on rent, his living costs, how much he was earning, and did he have any assets – tapping them in a desultory fashion into his computer. He was then asked to supply the bank with three years of tax returns as a self-employed person. ‘I just told you. I haven’t been a consultant for three years.’ The manager turned away and stared at the office wall for a minute or two as if the answer might appear there, before turning back to Hugh, sighing and shaking his head. ‘No can do.’
‘You mean you won’t give me a loan, even for a short period of time, until I’m set up?’
‘Too high a risk. Sorry, Hugh, but the figures don’t add up.’
Having once greeted him with open arms, his bank now regarded him with arms folded and a look of cold disdain. He was dismissed and out of the door in less than five minutes. The loans officer shook his hand, ‘Nice to have met you, Hugh.’ The fact the man didn’t call him Mr. Drysdale also made him angry. Now that he was out of work, didn’t own a property and had no assets, it was obvious no one respected him. He felt like throwing a brick through the bank’s window. He hated them. Banks should be not-for-profit organisations; they should serve. He knew such a dream was unrealistic, especially in a world where the word ‘banker’ means someone who runs a gambling house as well as someone who runs a bank. Certainly, the one thing almost everyone agreed on in the current economic climate was that the banks had been speculating. They’d been behaving like casinos – gamblers gambling with other people’s money. And in the US and the UK many of them were now throwing in their chips: they were bank-rupt.
From resembling, in the distant past, a community service, a service industry, Hugh concluded that the banks had deteriorated to such an extent they were now little more than self-serving gold diggers. From being institutions that, over the past ten years, had thrown money around with the recklessness of philanthropists on speed, backing hair-brained schemes and investing in any building that could boast at least one brick and a plank of wood – from practically begging people to take on a mortgage – every bank in the Western world donned, overnight, the cloaks of conservatism, canniness and stinginess. They continued to charge excessively for their modest services, continued to invest – and risk – other people’s money, and continued to only show interest in the welfare of their shareholders and their boards of directors. Hugh experienced a bittersweet moment when the CEOs of two of the UK’s major banks publicly apologised for letting the country down, causing the current financial meltdown, and for being both greedy and irresponsible. For him, it was a rare, very Japanese sight.
On the surface at least, the world went on as usual. As he walked away from the bank, he looked around him. The people seemed to be unaware of any calamity. Surely they were worried too? Surely they, too, were caught up in this vortex? The financial world, the business world, the whole neo liberalism system, including its property based foundations, was going down the plughole. Hadn’t they noticed? Surely he was not alone? He was tempted to stop someone in the street and ask if he or she was aware of what was going on.
He wondered if this was what Alison had always been referring to: the death throes of Capitalism presaging the beginning of a spiritual age. He despised the society he was a part of, the parasites who ran it, the rapaciousness of those who profited from it, the whole flimsy, unstructured, unregulated edifice built on greed. The people who were successful in this climate, the ones who managed to climb up onto the shoulders of everyone else, were those with an endless, insatiable appetite for short term profits, who speculated in real estate or shares or currencies. It didn’t seem to matter what you invested – no, speculated – in so long as it was quick, even instant; this week rather than next week, this year – at the outside – rather than ten, twenty or thirty years down the track. It was despicable, but he wasn’t too blinkered to appreciate that his view might arise from his lack of success in this new world.
As he slid out of the property market, so he slid off the edge of the advertising world. He was unaware of doing either. He had slid quite a distance before finally deciding he should register for unemployment. It was a big psychological step, an acknowledgement that he was going no further in the advertising world.
At Centrelink they said, ‘You have no formal qualifications, do you, Mr. Drysdale? That makes it difficult for us. Experience is fine, but it will only take you so far if you don’t have qualifications.’ The woman, spilling over the edge of her chair like some Rubenesque figure, perspiring heavily and with a hairy spot on her chin, managed to make it sound as if this was not only extremely unfortunate for Hugh, but also placed him at a severe disadvantage. ‘Still, we can but try. That’s why we’re here. Go and wait over there. Your number will be called.’ She handed him a ticket, and he joined many others, sitting forlorn and worn, all with dead eyes. He waited for three hours.
The Centrelink people treated him as if it was his fault he didn’t have work, as if he didn’t wish to work. Their attitude amounted to, ‘We’ve got your measure, you lazy son of a bitch. You just want to lie on your couch all day, drinking beer and watching telly. Oh yes, we know your sort. You can’t pull the wool over our eyes.’ Although he’d have preferred a job rather than receive money from the government, and told the various bureaucrats who interviewed him that he didn’t mind what kind of work he did, they insisted on treating him like a beggar, and behaving as if they were being generous, even charitable, in helping him out. For this he was expected to be grateful. Many times he was tempted to shout out that he’d paid his taxes, high taxes, but he fought against such impulses. He knew only too well that if you got on the wrong side of these petty tyrants, they could make your life unbearable.
They sent him for one or two job interviews. He was never sure what he should wear, whether to dress up or down. The premises he had to visit were often rundown, just off some major arterial road, with dust several millimetres thick on the windowsills, and graffiti on the outside walls. The people stared at him like he was a stranger who’d just walked into their small village from some distant land. They could smell his foreignness.
‘You’re not really what we had in mind,’ said a fat man in a shiny suit, the jacket of which barely contained his vast stomach, and with a curl on his top lip. Another said to him, ‘You’re too highly qualified for a job like this.’ ‘I don’t mind,’ Hugh replied. ‘Honestly, I don’t really have any qualifications, not real ones.’ The man stared at him. He appeared bored. ‘I’m happy to learn.’ It turned out they weren’t happy to teach him.
He knew he could do any of these jobs with his eyes closed, but they were never of
fered to him. He went for a job in a sandwich bar. It was in an industrial part of town, surrounded by factories and warehouses, so there was little risk of his being humiliated by an advertising colleague walking into the place. Once he wouldn’t have, couldn’t have contemplated eating in such a place. Food was spilling out of large wastebins at the back, and inside he could feel his feet sliding on the grease. The place had obviously never been visited by a government hygiene inspector. The owner, a slippery eastern European type with enough oil in his hair to fill a chip pan, asked Hugh if he had any experience.
‘Sorry?’
‘Worked in a sandwich bar before, have you?’
‘No, but I make a really good sandwich. My wife always said that about me. “Hugh makes a really good sandwich.”’
His attempt at levity was ignored. ‘We need someone with experience.’ And the man turned his back on Hugh and started to make a coffee.
‘I certainly have more experience with hygiene than you.’
The owner walked back to the end of the counter. ‘What you saying?’
‘I could report you for this.’ Hugh indicated behind the bar. The owner leant forward. ‘Fuck off, mate, before I thump you.’
He left.
Some people were willing to try him out, usually for one day or a weekend, but he was never paid. ‘It’s only a trial,’ they said. ‘We’ll pay you if it works out.’ It never worked out. He washed dishes in a restaurant. He did a stint in a bottle shop. Once he got a job cleaning up after a rock concert in the Domain. None of these trial jobs led to anything. He performed his duties well, but it seemed that there was always something unsatisfactory about whatever he did. Centrelink put him onto working for the dole. He wasn’t enthusiastic about this. ‘I’m happy to work, but I’m not keen to work on pretend jobs just for the sake of it, just so you can feel justified paying me.’
‘Mr. Drysdale, I’d remind you that Centrelink is not a charity. We have to employ people. We have to run this organisation as a business. You of all people …’
The people at Centrelink had the Liberals’ mindset, which was not so unexpected considering that Party had been in power for many years, and only recently been thrown out. Their basic belief was that people should look after themselves, and no one should rely on the State for handouts. He knew he was wasting his time even discussing the matter, so he went to work digging holes for fences and constructing paths through bushland. Many jobs involved cleaning up the waste of the well-off, those who had been in the great outdoors enjoying themselves and felt obliged to leave behind some sign of appreciation. Plastic bottles (which always reminded him of Penny), cans, cartons, paper, plastic shopping bags and bottle tops took over his life in much the same way that they’d infiltrated the streets, parks, wasteland, riverbanks, industrial sites and beaches of Sydney. On one of these jobs he met Joe. He was a good ten years older than Hugh, and he punctuated the beginning and end of every remark by rubbing the flats of both his hands furiously backwards and forwards across the top of his head. Whatever the reason for this – whteher it was a nervous tic or to stimulate his mind – Hugh found it disconcerting.
‘Spend my days in the State Library. I’m an autodidact’ – thrown in his listener’s face like a challenge to be denied. ‘Taught myself everything I know, and a little bit more. Left school at fifteen, mate. Only thing I learnt there was that education’s a complete waste of time.’ And down went his head for a quick rub.
They were picking up rubbish on the shores of the Harbour, around Elizabeth Bay. So far as Hugh could tell, Joe hadn’t known any other kind of work. Although he was well into his fifties, probably nearer sixty, he had maintained his anger, he hadn’t been beaten into silence. On the first day they met, they sat in the shade of a tree enjoying a break. Joe was opening up a tobacco pouch and, although both hands were occupied with rolling a smoke, he managed to point to his nose. ‘See how crooked it is? That’s ’cause I talk straight. Gets me into a lot of trouble that does, talking straight.’ He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. ‘At the risk of making myself sound like a washing machine part, I’m something of an agitator. Like a couple of weeks back. You hear about those businessmen sleeping out in Central Station to raise money for the homeless?’
‘Heard something about it on the radio.’
‘Well, I was there, mate. Went down there ’cause I couldn’t believe it. Had to see it with my own eyes. Got myself into a spot of bother, of course.’
‘Yes?’
‘I walked up to these rich blokes playing at being poor, wearing beanies and duck down jackets, and thermals no doubt, with their piles of blankets and their hot soup, all chatting away to each other as excited as kids on a sleep-over, and I asked if there was a banker among them.’ He laughed. ‘And there was, mate, there was. Can you believe it, a banker?’ He turned and stared fixedly at Hugh.
‘Am I missing something here, Joe?’
Joe took a suck on his rollie. ‘Well, this idiot puts his hand up, and there’s this TV crew moving in on us – you know, like they do when they think there’s a chance of tears or blood – and I ask him straight out, “Why do you think there are homeless in the first place, mate?” And he stares at me blankly, like I was a bleeding Martian or something. “It’s ’cause you lend them huge effing mortgages they’ll never be able to pay back, then kick them out their homes. That’s why they’re homeless.”’
‘What did he say?’
‘He muttered something or other. Tried to make out it wasn’t true. Usual crap. A minute later this cop’s asking me to move on, says I’m causing a disturbance. “I’m homeless, mate,” I say, all innocent; “I’ve nowhere to move on to.” And this camera crew is still filming us – they were on my good side, too, which pleased me. See, that’s my best profile.’ He turned his head to the left, lifting up his chin, grinning all the while. ‘And this cop and this banker were getting more and more agitated, and eventually I was manhandled out of there. It was on telly, mate – my ugly mug all over the screen.’ He laughed until it made him cough, and then he spat and lay back on the grass. ‘They were going to charge me with disturbing the peace; how about that? It’s them business folk who were disturbing the peace.’
On another occasion Joe said, ‘The older I get, the more left wing I become. Funny that. I always understood a fellow’s supposed to become more right wing as he grows older. Can you account for that, Hugh?’ He was resting on his spade, having a short break. He believed in breaks, and was always on at Hugh for working too hard.
‘Trouble is, the lefties are such a miserable bunch. Never satisfied, that lot, always something upsetting them. They’ve been that way since the eighties. Those were the days when kindness died, killed off by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher. The only kindness shown in society in the eighties and nineties was institutional kindness, paid kindness from those leftie, sandal-wearing do-gooders and professional carers. But it wasn’t until a few years later, when George W. Bush, that traitor Blair and our own nonentity of a Prime Minister, the despicable Howard, arrived on the scene, that it really became every man for himself. That’s when society was split into winners and losers. Competition was everything, for people and for companies. And it’s still like that today, Hugh, twenty years later. No different here to America or Britain, that’s the sad thing.’
Hugh felt he was listening to words that Joe had spoken many times before, but that did nothing to detract from the sincerity with which they were delivered.
‘Know what’s so surprising, mate? We all put up with it. One per cent of Americans own over forty per cent of that country’s wealth, and we’re going exactly the same way in Australia. And what do the poor and the vulnerable do about it? Nothing.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘They’ve taught us the virtues of self-reliance, of not depending on the government for handouts, and they’ve taught us well: we all put up with it. They call it compassion with a hard edge, and it’s practised by employers, politicians and those well-fe
d moralists who are all around us today. “Don’t rely on us to help you out,” they say, “you have to look after yourself now. We’re too busy helping companies. Prosperous, profitable companies are good for all of us.”’ Joe raised his spade high into the air before striking it back hard into the sandy soil with an emphatic, conclusive thump. ‘Well, you could have fooled me! Certainly put me on easy street, as you can see.’ He stopped work again just a minute later to add, ‘The irony is, my friend, now that they’ve stopped taxing the rich and deregulated everything – it hasn’t brought about a golden age. Quite the opposite. It’s finished off the family and the community, the very institutions they once relied on. Work’s become more stressful, people have become more anxious, isolated and lonely – and, of course, overworked. Look at the hours people are expected to work today. Is that progress?’ He shook his head, unable to comprehend such a puzzle. ‘But now I’ll get off my soapbox.’ And he started digging again. ‘Get back to digging my own grave.’ And he chortled.
Hugh marvelled at how Joe had managed not to be crushed by the system he so obviously rejected and despised. There was something indestructible about the man, the small, wiry frame, the furtive eyes, and the quick, darting movements. He was a skinny version of those round toys that always bounce back to the vertical every time you try to knock them over.
‘The system works like the lottery, see. They let you win ten dollars every now and again, maybe twenty once in a blue moon, little handouts that encourage you to keep going, always in the hope of the big payout. The system’s no different. It can be a job with a small wage attached. It might be that some of us get to purchase a house, get a foot in the door. The more educated you are, the more they have to give you. That’s how it works. If you’ve not got too much up top, they reckon they can get away with giving you very little. That’s because you don’t really understand what’s going on, and you’re not ever likely to work it out.’
