For reasons I was yet to understand, our floor smelt like a fish market and was lit by rows of flickering tubes that inspired, on average, two epileptic seizures a month. Beige dividers formed our ‘work spaces’, which were mostly dressed with excitedly doctored calendars.
The building itself was a crime that legislation was yet to recognise. It resembled a giant mass of congealed pus, if congealed pus could be sculpted into harsh angles and appointed with windows. Birds glimpsed the atrocity and fell dead. Junkies, intuiting some dark connection with the building, jabbed themselves with their last fix in our lobby.
On my first day, John introduced my team.
‘Toby, I’d like you to meet Susie,’ he said. Startled, Susie turned from her screen, which showed an eBay page for an industrial-sized tarpaulin. The neckline of her faded red T-shirt was laced with a string of multicoloured resin beads. ‘Susie writes our media releases,’ John explained.
‘But that’s not really my passion,’ Susie said.
‘Oh? What is?’ I asked. John stiffened.
‘Susie, I don’t think Toby is—’
‘Film,’ Susie said.
‘You like film?’
‘I don’t just like film,’ Susie smiled proudly. ‘I make films. Specifically, pornography.’
I nodded.
‘Ready for my pitch? I’m looking for investors.’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s summer in the suburbs,’ Susie said, gesturing sweepingly to suggest an Australian dream. ‘The barbie’s on, the beer is cold, and the boys are in the backyard, playing cricket. Camera moves in: there’s a shirtless man wielding a bat. Like he was born with it. Who is that man?’
I shrugged.
‘It’s Dong Bradman. Camera pulls back. Bowler’s charging in. It’s a short delivery, bit of chin music. But is The Dong intimidated?’
I shook my head.
‘Correct. He moves to the back foot, hooks the ball for six. Textbook. But the ball’s gone, Toby, over the neighbour’s fence. Six and out. Now Dong’s gotta fetch it.’
‘From the neighbour?’ I asked, knowing the answer.
‘Right.’
‘That’s you?’
‘Bingo. And that, mate, is Sex and Out. I see myself as an auteur. The Tarantino of todger.’
She definitely had a vision. John was rubbing his brow despairingly. ‘This,’ John gestured, ‘is Archibald Honeydew, a departmental treasure and our media liaison officer.’
A tall, elderly man stood gracefully and offered his hand. He was dressed with incongruous elegance — I could imagine him having been a witty confidant to Jackie Kennedy. Bowtie with herringbone jacket; impeccably pleated pants. A thin tuft of hair was carefully parted and secured with gel. Then, suddenly, his face crumpled with embarrassment and he walked quickly away.
‘Don’t take that personally,’ John said. ‘Archie has Tourette’s.’
‘Where’s he going?’ I asked, watching him open a door and disappear inside.
‘The Vault,’ John replied. ‘We’ve fitted the stationery room with foam padding, so it’s acoustically secure. More or less.’
‘He’s a darling,’ Susan told me.
‘A gentle puritan,’ John said.
Archibald had a doctorate in ‘continental philosophy’, John explained, and had once edited an influential newspaper in the ’70s until, during an interview, he called the prime minister a ‘piss gibbon’.
The soundproofing was imperfect, and while John and Susan described the sweetness of their colleague’s virtue, I heard what sounded like distant artillery fire. Then the Vault’s door opened and Archibald reappeared, walking towards us, his height shrunk with shame. He extended his hand to me again. ‘My richest apologies,’ he said. ‘My psyche hosts a voluble demon.’
Our floor met in the conference room once a week, whether we needed to or not. Though discussion was almost entirely concerned with toner levels and the dubiousness of the Vault’s soundproofing, everyone brought pens, folders, and thick notepads to suggest their workload and expectation of a lively meeting.
‘Good morning,’ John said. ‘Before we start, I want to acknowledge our newest staff member. Toby is our speechwriter, and will be working closely with Susan, Archibald, and the Minister’s office.’ I nodded. ‘Now, first up we have Abigail on a lingering issue. After repeated warnings, I had really hoped this would have stopped by now. But here we are. Abigail.’
Abigail was John’s personal assistant, and the logistics manager for the floor. It was said that she was once a feared and fastidious gatekeeper of stationery, until she accidentally sent a private email to everyone on the floor, in which she mocked Susan’s homemade earrings with the kind of invective usually reserved for condemning abusive priests. After this, Abigail was no longer regarded as coldly scrupulous — with one stray email, she had destroyed her moral authority.
Abigail gently cleared her throat. ‘The prawn issue is ongoing,’ she said. Some scribbled ‘prawns’ in their notebooks. ‘Last week, Geoffrey discovered four taped to the bottom of his keyboard. Now, it’s possible that someone from another division is responsible. But if it’s one of us, please stop immediately or this will be escalated.’
That explained the smell.
With no work to do, in my first few weeks at DARE I developed a cheap ruse: printing off long articles unrelated to work and reading them with a concerned face and hovering pen to give the impression I was crafting the next Redfern speech. But the duplicity was unnecessary: a casual survey of the floor revealed shamelessly undisguised sessions of Minesweeper.
This idleness, I learnt, wasn’t simply a common personality flaw — it reflected the distrust of the Minister’s office, which was assigning less and less work to the department. This distrust was demoralising, if not unfounded, and it created a circular contempt. Shown little faith, the bureaucrats became idler and more petulant, reinforcing the political staffers’ assessment of them as superannuated parasites.
Susie was in the Vault with Rupert from accounting, ‘shooting the interiors’ for Sex and Out, though I didn’t see any cameras. I was editing her script. The writing was appalling, but at least I had a rare opportunity to elevate porn’s language.
EXT. FRONT DOOR, MILF’S HOUSE — DAY
MILF opens front door. Sees shirtless DONG BRADMAN in boardies cricket whites.
DONG BRADMAN
G’day. Sorry to disturb you, miss.
MILF
What seems to be the problem?
DONG BRADMAN
Well, my ball is in your backyard.
MILF
Oh. Well, you’d better come in then.
INT. MILF’S HOUSE -
