Hunger Town (19 page)

‘This morning, Miss Larson, I think you should just get to know us and observe, otherwise it is too overwhelming,
n'est-ce pas
?'

At her French a couple of the girls grinned.

‘See,' she said, ‘they have a little giggle at me.' She dropped her hand on one of the girls' shoulders. ‘Ruby thinks I'm a great joke,
n'est-ce pas
?'

Ruby cocked an eye at her and responded in French, ‘
Pas du tout, M'selle
.'

The class descended into giggles.

‘Ruby,' she said, ‘is always a little bit cheeky, but in this scruffy head,' and she touched her hair lightly, ‘is the mind of an artiste. Ruby can see her whole painting in her head before she even picks up a pencil or paint brush. Do you do this also, Miss Judith? Do your first visualise it in your mind's eye?'

‘Why, yes,' I said, surprised at her perception. ‘I do. Always.'

She nodded and looked satisfied as if I had confirmed something important.

Miss Taylor, or Miss Marie as she wanted to be called, let me sit peacefully and listen to her advising her students but after an hour or so she took my folio, which lay on the desk at the end of the room with a higgledy-piggledy collection of other work, and came to sit beside me. There was no formality of sitting across the desk from her. She just drew up a chair and sat down. I felt not a student but an equal.

‘These are very good,' she said, turning over my drawings.

I had done some additional cartoons, sharpening their meanings with ironic biblical quotations. I had learned from studying Goya's work that there was a depth in the symbols we all recognised.

I had drawn two cartoons of the soup kitchen: one of Mrs Danley ladling soup into the billycan of a single man while a long queue of others waited and disappeared behind him. I had given it the caption
Give us this day our daily bread.

A second had been prompted by the women's constant fears that one day they'd have no food to give out because the little shops which usually supported the poor had given so much on tick that now they, too, were going broke. Soon the little extra they found to help the soup kitchen would cease.

In this cartoon I drew two women speaking to each other while they held a plate with five loaves and two fishes on it. The people in the queue were turning aside in despair and trudging away. The caption read:
But this is all we have today
.

Miss Marie looked from the cartoons to me and her face was sad. ‘It is very hard at the Port?'

I nodded, embarrassingly close to tears. The sympathy of a stranger and the anxiety of the morning choked me. She saw it and was brisk.

‘Very good, Miss Judith, and very original. But here and here,' she pointed to parts of my drawing, ‘your line, tone, proportion, perspective … Your natural talent needs refining. We must be able to see the bodies through the clothes. The impact will be greater. You'll benefit from our life classes.'

She asked me about my pencils and paper and gave me advice on what to buy. I looked dismayed. She patted my hand. ‘Never mind. These we can supply. We have a fund. A small one to help.'

I flushed. This was charity. We all struggled against it.

She was matter-of-fact. ‘These days there are many poor, Miss Judith. You should not feel insulted. It is not your fault. There are other girls here we help. Should art cease because stupid men wreck the country?'

My art classes became a joy, a respite and an escape from the slow boiling anger that consumed those I loved. All those who had refused to comply with the Beeby Award and had walked off the
Mannipa
had been sacked, including my father.

At a loose end Harry had taken to hanging around the soup kitchen. With his youthful ebullience he soon charmed the women, and began to assume, with a certain lordly air, special rights to help. Of course he stood on Herbie's toes, and unable to compete with Harry's glamour, Herbie retired sulky and hurt.

He tried to organise the queue but Harry disorganised it by fiddling jigs on the old second-hand violin he had bought and taught himself to play. The children were delighted and in a circle about him bobbed up and down happily to his tunes. He was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin.

Herbie hovered helplessly, his sense of orderliness threatened. When he tried to lead the children back to their parents he was hurt by their reproach to leave them because they were having fun.

I watched poor desolate Herbie standing confused and unwanted and remonstrated with Harry. He was immediately contrite. ‘What a fool I am, Judith. What an insensitive clot.' And he thumped himself on the chest. Immediately he rushed up to Herbie and shook his hand. ‘What a great bloke you are, Herbie, and what a wonderful job you do here. I didn't mean to interfere, you know. Now you tell me what I can do to help. You're the boss.'

Mollified and forgiving, Herbie explained to him the routine of the kitchen and the distribution. It wasn't complicated and Harry already knew it but he listened intently to his instructions, murmuring agreement and assurances that he would do exactly as Herbie wanted. Herbie patted him on the back and called him a good boy. Harry gave me his irrepressible wink.

In the afternoon Harry walked back to the hulk with us. We didn't talk about my father's sacking. What was the point of endlessly dredging up our anger so that when we had eventually shovelled a great heap of dirt we could stand around helplessly wondering what to do with it? Nor did we talk about the increasing numbers of people at the soup kitchen and our diminishing sources of food supplies.

The Salvation Army called for help from other churches, in wealthier areas of Adelaide, but now there were many more soup kitchens all struggling for a pitiful supply of leftovers.

It was a sunny afternoon and I took off my hat, pulled up my sleeves and let the warmth seep into my face and arms. Beside me Harry wheeled his bicycle. His shirt sleeves were also rolled up and the fine gold hairs glinted along his arms, a soft fuzz that stirred as the muscles flexed and relaxed. He had fine wrists and long fingered hands with spatulate fingers, what my mother sentimentally called ‘pianist's hands'. A few gulls squatting in a row on a rooftop suddenly took off with piercing shrieks, zoomed wildly to and fro, then settled again on the same rooftop. Perhaps they knew what it was all about. Their frenzy seemed meaningless to me. Sparrows jostled for space in a dust hole on the footpath. They fluffed cheerily, companionable and content.

Some new manure from a passing horse and cart steamed thickly on the road. In a minute someone would rush out and shovel it into a bucket, either to dry for fuel or put on their small vegetable patches. The horses could hardly keep up with the demand for manure. Where possible people helped themselves. No one grew flowers now, only vegetables, in any available space. Along the wharf, rows of unemployed men sat with hopeful fishing lines. Boys rode their bicycles to the outskirts of Adelaide and in bush areas trapped or hunted down rabbits. Jock and Bernie occasionally brought us a rabbit and I imagined Bernie's slick silver knife skinning and gutting it.

My thoughts had drifted to the days since my father's sacking. When we reached the hulk my mother made a pot of tea and we sat quietly around the table. She was too tired to talk. The tea was weak. It was the third infusion. She no longer threw out the tea leaves after the first brew but poured them through a sieve, carefully dried them and used them again and again. After the third infusion they were too insipid to re-use and regretfully she threw them away. These small parsimonies wore her out.

She hated collecting our food rations and more often now I went in her place. I was ashamed to bring the inferior food home. She tried not to turn it over and examine it in disgust but the meat was frequently too strong for her liking and the vegetables were rarely fresh. The flour often had the telltale spider webs of weevils and every morning we ate large bowls of oatmeal porridge with treacle. ‘Good sustaining food,' my mother said stoutly as she served it and we ate it stolidly and determinedly. There was no point in longing for something tastier.

When my father caught a fish we feasted. Jock and Bernie-Benito dropped in regularly. When they brought a rabbit my mother stewed it with onion and we shared it with them, pleased if only in a small way, to be able to eat with friends. Jock was worried about Bernie-Benito and told my father about it. Bernie was not an Australian citizen.

‘The bastards might deport him,' Jock snarled. ‘They're hunting down radicals. Say they're an undesirable influence. Let them try to send him back to that murderous thug of a Mussolini.'

He thumped Bernie on the back. ‘We'll hide you, won't we, mate?'

Bernie grinned and his fingers strayed towards the knife in his belt.

‘Should you carry a knife, Bernie?' I asked suddenly. ‘You don't want to give the police excuses.'

He understood the word knife and looked at Jock. Jock raised his eyebrows at me, disbelievingly. He translated. Bernie beamed at me and spoke in Italian. Jock shook his head and chuckled. ‘He says not to worry, Miss Judith, it's only for rabbits.' But Bernie and his future added another dimension to our fears.

On this occasion, as we sat round the table, Harry had been unable to find a topic for cheery conversation. He left early and I walked with him to the gangplank. He frowned. ‘Does your father pull this up every night?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘He should do it always. Do you see men skulking along the wharf in the night?'

‘Occasionally.'

‘They may mean no good, Judith.'

‘I know. But, oddly, Harry, they've always been there. Ever since my childhood. Once I saw one of them swim out to the boat for bread my mother threw overboard with the slops. It's a long time ago but I remember because it was the first time I saw someone desperate for food. Now we're all like that.'

He took my hand. ‘What time do you finish at art school on Tuesdays and Thursdays?'

‘About four.'

‘Then I'll meet you there. Maybe we can get some time together that we don't have to share with someone else.'

‘I'd like that,' I said. It was true. Our friendship always seemed to be a community one, shared either with Winnie, my mother or father, the people at the soup kitchen, even Nathan.

The following Tuesday Harry waited for me outside the Arts School. I found him leaning against the wall, his bicycle propped beside him. He was humming his favourite tune, ‘What'll I do when you are far away and I am blue, what'll I do?'

He came eagerly to meet me. I was leaving with Ruby and several other girls. They recognised the tune, giggled and cast simpering sidelong glances at Harry. He smiled at them, a dazzling animated smile that sweetened his face and lit his eyes. They blushed, entranced, and hesitated, longing for an introduction.

After I had introduced them and they had left with many backward looks and a lot of hand waving, I reproached him for embarrassing me. He laughed. ‘You're not ashamed of me, Judith, are you?'

‘Only of your conceit, Harry.'

‘Ooops,' he said.

‘Oh, Harry, you,' I retaliated, mimicking Winnie.

He grinned, pulled my work bag over his shoulder, took my arm and with his free hand wheeled his bike. ‘Instead of going straight down North Terrace to the railway station let's go a long way around,' he said. ‘I might get to talk to you.'

The streets through which we strolled were new to us and pleasantly strange. Isolated from a throng of people we had never met before and were likely to never meet again, we felt happily marooned. At first our conversation was desultory.

‘Are you enjoying art school?' Harry asked.

‘Yes, I love it.'

‘Have you done any more cartoons?'

‘Yes. I hope to sell a couple. We need the money.'

‘Who doesn't?' he grunted, but there was no edge to his grumble. Money and troubles were remote from us.

‘So you've joined the Communist Party, Harry?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you believe in all that?'

He looked at me seriously. ‘I think I do, Judith. It makes sense to me. I've read the books Nathan gave me and thought about his ideas. It's a kind of a relief to find some explanation for what is happening. I've been very confused and now a lot of things are clearer and strangely I'm happier, not because I'm better off, but because I understand.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I can see that makes sense. When I was a little girl I asked Joe Pulham about Aristotle.'

‘Aristotle?' He was perplexed.

‘A Greek philosopher, before Christ.'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘That's a long time ago. Did they have philosophers then?'

‘I think so, at least they had Aristotle. He said that the best way to live was to be moderate.'

Harry looked puzzled. ‘I don't know how that would solve anything.'

‘No, perhaps not. Maybe he was just giving advice on how to go about things.'

He furrowed his brow, then laughed. ‘Perhaps we can share Aristotle with the ship owners who sacked your dad. You should come to a Communist Party meeting again, Judith. You'd enjoy it and maybe find a subject for a cartoon.'

‘Like Nathan's sisters? A pair of Medusas.'

He shouted with laughter and several people turned to look at us.

‘Shush, Harry.'

‘Shush yourself, Judith. When you make me laugh, I'll laugh. I wish Nathan would laugh properly, right from his belly. It's usually a rather constipated snicker or snigger. It makes me uncomfortable.'

‘It's probably living with those two sisters. They'd constipate anyone.'

He threatened to chortle again and I squeezed his arm.

‘Really, Judith, you're such a card. I suppose you know that Nathan carries a torch for you.'

‘I know no such thing, Harry.'