A canopy of wire shrouds the squat, grey two-storey building. The entrance to the area between the wire and the building is a turnstile guarded by a security hut. Entry to the building itself—for there is no other reason to breach the wire—is by way of a double glass-panelled door which leads into a short hall watched over by two or three uniformed attendants. To the left are rows of dark plastic chairs; to the right another pair of glass-panelled doors opens into a large, empty room. Through here yet another set of doors brings you into a long, wide room. On one side is a counter topped to the high ceiling by protective glass. Behind the glass are low boxes of index cards thumbed through by mostly young men and women. They slip forms on request through openings in the glass shields to queues of mostly young, casually dressed men and women.
This is the dole, the “broo”. It is a Monday morning. On the grey plastic chairs sit a dozen people. Some wear the uniform of the casually unemployed: training shoes, jeans, zip-up jackets or sports tops. Other classes wear clothes like this, of course—occasionally. Many of the casually unemployed wear them all the time, at funerals and dances, at weddings and on street corners, in warm weather and wet. Some of the casually unemployed are women; more unwaged than unemployed, many are accompanied by small children. Prams are not permitted in the broo, though, so the small children thus liberated, or denied a resting place, laugh or whinge the time away, crawling over and under the plastic chairs and across the cold floor. Occasionally an adult or juvenile will raise his eyes off the tiled floor to smile or glare at the infant malcontents; others doze fitfully, one or two read newspapers, some converse quietly together. All are bored. When an attendant arrives with a list of names, all look up expectantly.
“Grogan, McAteer, Russell.” The attendant calls, and the owners of the names signal their presence and are directed to small rooms or cubicles where they provide answers to the many questions asked to ascertain whether they can be permitted a loan or a small grant. Usually they wait for hours. Sometimes they wait for nothing.
In the big room with the long counter the signing-on is done. All signers-on go to a previously assigned, numbered part of the counter. They show a yellow card, a UB40, and pass over a white card which they have received in the post with their giro check—a new one with every payment. They are given a slip of paper in exchange. They sign this declaration which confirms that they have not worked since last they signed on, and that, usually, is that. At busy times a queue will form; at other times a signer-on may be challenged from behind the counter.
Occasionally there will be a spot check. Is the signer-on impersonating someone else or are they really the person they claim to be? The large signing-on room is less grim than the smaller one. Fewer people sit waiting there, and unless they are challenged or spot checked or waiting for a friend, most slip in and out as quickly as possible. Outside the building two streams of people moved urgently back and forth. Richard McCaughley, swept along in the human current, entered the building. A slightly built, dark-haired man in his mid-twenties, he wore jeans, denim jacket and training shoes. His attractive face was unshaven and his eyes were cheerful and alert. He whistled quietly to himself as he went to his box and presented his UB40. He was shaken from his musical reverie only when the man behind him in the queue nudged his arm.
Richard looked up. The young woman behind the counter tapped the glass with her pen.
“Payment has been discontinued, Mr McCaughley,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take a seat for a few minutes. Mr Bryson will see you.”
Richard nodded blankly. As he went to one of the plastic seats his mind raced ahead, panicking as the news sank in. “Your payment has been discontinued, Mr McCaughley. Your payment has been discontinued.”
He slouched into his seat. “What will I tell Jean?” he asked himself. He glanced anxiously up at the box. The clerk wasn’t there. When she returned she smiled brightly over at him. Reassured, his panic abated. “It’s just a mistake, some balls-up.” They couldn’t discontinue his payment. He had to live. He had a wife and two children to keep; they couldn’t be left to starve. Indignation replaced despondency. “Who do they think they are? Treating people like dirt.”
“Mr McCaughley.” A tall middle-aged man with glasses summoned him to the counter. He held a handful of forms as he leaned over towards Richard and spoke to him in a low, confidential tone which struggled to be heard above the babble of noise around them.
“Mr McCaughley, my name is Bryson. Your payment has been discontinued: your oldest child has passed the school attendance age. If he is going to stay at school you will have to make a fresh claim. In the meantime I have arranged for you to get a special benefit. You will have to take this form to the lady up at special benefits.
“I can help you to fill in a new claim for your income support, or if you wish you can fill it in yourself and leave it back here for me.” He looked quizzically over his glasses at Richard.
“What do you mean my son’s left school?” Richard asked.
“According to our forms he is school-leaving age. If he wishes to stay at school,”Mr Bryson spoke more slowly and deliberately this time, “if he wishes to stay at school you will have to make a fresh claim. The claim for your wife and youngest child is being processed at present, so I have arranged a special benefit for…”
“My son is only a child,” Richard interrupted him.
Mr Bryson’s face wore the resigned look of a worn-out schoolteacher.
“That may be so, but at sixteen he is at school-leaving age.”
“Our Danny is sixteen months old, not sixteen years,” Richard said tersely.
“Are you sure?” Mr Bryson peered at him.
“Am I sure? Am I fucking sure? Of course, I’m sure. I’m his fucking da, amn’t I?”
“Well according to this form he is sixteen years of age and…”
“He’s sixteen months. He hasn’t even started school yet, never mind leaving it!”
“Well, obviously there has been some mistake. Can you give me the child’s full names and date of birth please, Mr McCaughley?”
Mr Bryson noted down Richard’s replies and went off with his handful of forms. He returned a few minutes later.
“Look, this is where the mistake is, Mr McCaughley; I’m very sorry. It’s the computer printout.”
He showed Richard the sheet of paper.
“I’ll get this sorted out for your next signing-on day. It has to go back to central office, you see,” he continued apologetically, “but you’ll get the payment as normal for yourself and the wife and one child, and if you go up to special benefits with this form you’ll get payment for the other child. I’m sorry,” he concluded sheepishly, “it’s the bloody computer.” He slipped the form through to Richard.
“It’s okay,” Richard said quietly. Suddenly he felt sorry for Mr Bryson. He picked up the form. “I’m sorry for cursing at you,” he said.
He turned and walked slowly out of the signing-on room towards the special benefits room. Mr Bryson stood immobile behind his counter, blushing a little. Then he shuffled his handful of forms. He looked over to the middle-aged woman sitting opposite him.
“Spot check, please! Mrs Flannery?” he called brusquely.
The man sitting on the plastic chair beside Richard gurgled; that is, his stomach gurgled. He looked over at Richard.
“Was that you or me?” he smiled.
“What’s that?” Richard stammered. He wanted to avoid conversation.
It was almost half-past eleven and he had now been in the broo for two hours. He looked over towards the cubicle. Somewhere behind the door his benefits form was being processed. His neighbour’s stomach gurgled again. He nudged Richard.
“My guts think my throat’s cut. I’m starved. Here, d’you want a fag?” he asked.
“Thanks, mate,” Richard inhaled thankfully. He had smoked the last of his cigarettes for breakfast that morning. “I was dying for a smoke.”
“Aye, I know the craic myself. There’s nothing worse than having no smokes. Especially in a kip like this.” He glanced up as an attendant called out a list of names.
“Nope. No luck there. Ach, well, there’s no use complaining. No point in biting the hand that feeds you, that’s what I say.”
“Unless you’re starving,” Richard observed dryly.
“Ha,” his neighbour chortled, “that’s a good one. Well said. Oops, that’s me.” He nodded over towards the attendant. “See ya, son.”
“Thanks for the cigarette,” Richard called after him.
“No problem, son. No problem.”
Richard slouched into the chair and sucked his cigarette down to its filter. A slight nicotine-induced sickness turned his stomach and dampened his brow with sweat. He flicked the filter tip away from him and looked about the room for a toilet door. There wasn’t one.
“Excuse me, missus, do you know where the toilet is?”
“I do not, son. I do not indeed. I was just saying to myself, so I was, you’d think they’d have a toilet here. It’s desperate. There’s nothing here. Not even a place to get a cup of tea. I’m parched for a wee cup of tea.”
“McCaughley.”
Richard excused himself, stepped over two squabbling children and went, as directed by the attendant, into a small cubicle. He meant to ask the whereabouts of a toilet, but when a small grey-haired woman bustled into the cubicle, he decided to ignore his nagging bladder.
“Good morning, Mr McCaughley; I won’t delay you.”
Richard nodded in reply.
“You’re making a special benefits claim because your son has started work,” she noted, glancing up from the paperwork before her. “He left school last week, isn’t that right?”
“No, there’s been a mistake. The man at my signing-on box is sorting it out. I’m having a special allowance claim in the meantime.”
“What do you mean, a mistake?”
“The computer messed up my son’s age. He’s sixteen months; the computer put him down as sixteen years.”
“Oh, I see. Well, we can’t have that. I need a different form. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She rose and shoved back her chair.
“I’ve been here since a quarter-past nine,” Richard complained.
Her face clouded.
“I’m sorry, Mr McCaughley, but I’m doing my best.”
“I know,” Richard said sulkily, embarrassed by his tone. The door closed behind her.
“It’s not your fault,” Richard told the door. “It’s nobody’s fault. It never is.”
Half an hour later he left the cubicle. An attendant was telling the dozen or so on the black plastic chairs that they would have to leave and return after lunch. Richard hunched his shoulders into his denim jacket and edged his way past them. He joined the stream of people bobbing their way via the glass-panelled doors towards the turnstile in the wire fence. The stream of people surged around and past him so that he was sluggishly towed in their wake on to the pavement outside. He went up the road and into the toilet in Daly’s bar. As he left the bar a light drizzling rain started. He walked his way slowly home, a small, slightly built dark-haired man in his mid-twenties. His attractive face was unshaven and his eyes were downcast.