CLERK STARKE

Unemployed!

He sat in a plastic chair in a Job Centre. The chairs were all the same in these places; in every Social Security office and Job Centre he'd ever been in. Not exactly the same as each other; he'd seen different types, but they were all the same types. He wondered if any of the chairs provided protection against microwaves.

A woman had been talking to him, but she had gone away. She didn't seem to be able to cope with him. Probably they hadn't expected this. They hadn't prepared properly.

He had decided not to go straight home, or to go to the pub yet. That was what they would expect him to do. Just sacked, or rather resigned, with all that money; of course, the obvious thing to do would be go home to his room or to have a drink. They wouldn't expect him to go to a Job Centre and sign on. So when he had seen the sign ahead of him in the street, he'd walked right in and sat down and demanded to be attended to.

"Mr..?" a man said to him. Light suit, short hair, spotty face, but looking in charge. He sat down opposite Grout and clasped his hands on the large white blotter which almost covered the top of the small desk.

"What?" Grout said suspiciously. He hadn't been listening.

"Your name is...?" the young man said.

"Steven," Grout said.

"Ah... that's your first name?"

Grout leaned forward, put one fist on the table and stared into the man's eyes, his own narrowed and glinting as he said, "How many do you think I've had?"

The young man looked confused and concerned. Steven folded his arms and leant back, feeling triumphant. That had floored him! Steven put his safety helmet further back on his head. This was quite good really. He felt he had the upper hand for once, and they hadn't been able to set up the Microwave Gun yet, either; he felt cool and relaxed. Of the two of them the young Job Centre man looked the more hot and worried.

"Can we start again?" the young man said, taking out a pen and tapping the end of it on his lower teeth. He smiled impatiently.

"Oh, yes," Steven said cunningly, "I'm an expert at starting again. Let's."

"Fine," the young man said. He drew a breath.

"What's your name?" Grout said suddenly, leaning forward again.

The young man looked at him for a while. "Starke," he said.

"Are you staring, or..."

"Look, sir," the young man called Starke said seriously, putting his pen down, "I'm trying to do my job here; now... are we going to approach this in a sensible manner or not? Because if not, there are plenty of people -"

"And you look, clerk Starke," Grout said, and tapped one finger on the small desk. Starke looked at the finger, so he withdrew it when he remembered how dirty his fingernails were. "I'm unemployed, you know, ,'don't have some nice safe little civil service job with pensions and... and things. I'm a victim of the recession. You may think it's all a joke -"

"I assure you - "

" - but I know what's going on, and I know why I'm here and why you're here. Oh, yes. I'm not stupid. You can't pull the wool over my eyes like that. I know what the score is, like they say. I may be thirty-sev - thirty-eight, but I'm 'switched on' all right, and I know everything isn't 'hunky-dory' the way people think it is. You may think it's easy for you, and it might be, but I'm not so easily fooled, oh no." He sat back again, nodding emphatically. He didn't always express himself perfectly, he would be the first to admit that, but it wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it. Somebody famous had said that.

"Well, sir, I'm not going to be able to help you unless you let me ask you some questions."

"Well then," said Grout, throwing his arms wide and opening his eyes wide, "get on with it. On you go; I'm ready. Ask away."

Starke sighed. "Right," he said. "What's your name?"

"Grout," Steven said.

"That's your surname?" Starke said.

Grout thought about this carefully. He always got confused with this. Which was surname and which was Christian name? It was like nett and gross; he always got them mixed up. Why didn't people just say first and second? Just to confuse him, no doubt. There was a way of working it out though. If you were a "Sir" then the name just after that was your first name, so that must be the surname... and Christian name was easy because Christ had been Jesus Christ, so obviously therefore the Christian name was the second name... and that was how you could tell.

That seemed logical, but now he thought about it he wasn't sure that that wasn't the way to remember the way it wasn't, not the way it was. He decided to play safe.

"My name is Mister Steven Grout."

"Fine," Starke said, writing, " 'Grout' as in that stuff you put between tiles and bricks and things, right?" He looked up.

Steven's eyes narrowed. "What are you trying to insinuate?"

"I'm... I'm not -"

"I will not be insinuated against," Steven said, and tapped the front of the desk. "What business is it of yours to make insinuations against me, I'd like to know, eh? Answer me that."

"I -"

"No, you can't, can you? And I'll tell you why. Because I'm not here because I want to be, that's why. There. I'm not one of your scroungers. I've never taken the easy way out, I'll have you know. It hasn't always been easy but I've always kept my self-respect, and I haven't let anybody take that away. I'm my own man and that's very important in these times, even if you haven't had the problems I've had, and you haven't, because that's perfectly obvious, you're sitting there and asking me the questions. You've got to realise, clerk Starke -"

"I'm not -"

" - that we're on opposite sides of the desk, as it were." He tapped the desk to show what he was talking about. "This is a symbol, you know." He sat back to let this sink in. Starke looked at the desk.

"It's a desk, Mr Grout."

"It's a symbolic desk," Grout said, jabbing his finger at it. "It's a symbolic desk because we're sat on opposite sides of it, and that's the way things'll always be. Like that. You can't tell me any different. I know the score, like they say."

"Mr Grout," Starke sighed, laying the pen down again, "I'm afraid this interview isn't really getting us very far. You talked to my colleague Ms Phillips when you first came in -"

"I didn't find out her name," Grout waved one hand dismissively.

"Well you didn't get very far with her either, did you? And now-"

"I didn't get very far?" Grout said, "I didn't get very far? It's not my job to get very far; it's yours. You're supposed to get far with me. You're the people who get trained in this sort of thing, not me," Steven said indignantly, and tapped the desk once more, for emphasis. "How often do you think I do this, eh? Answer me that. Do you think I make a habit of this sort of thing, is that it? Are you making insinuations again?"

"I'm not trying to insinuate anything, Mr Grout," Starke said as he sat back in his chair, resigned. He shook his head, "I'm trying... I was trying to conduct an interview, and now I'm trying to explain to you that you're not making it at all easy. First you made my colleague distressed -"

"I could tell she didn't like me. She was contemptuous. I won't have that," Grout explained. Starke shrugged.

"Whatever. Now you've made it impossible for me to carry out an interview despite the fact I've been extremely patient -"

"I'm not stopping you from carrying on your interview," Grout said, shaking his head. "I'm not. You ask your questions, I'll answer. On you go. Just ask what you want. I'm very cooperative. I'm just not prepared to be contemptuated against or be the object of insinuations, that's all."

The young man sat looking at him for a moment, then raised his eyebrows, sat forward and took up his pen once more. "Very well. We'll try one more time. Your name is Mr Steven Grout -"