Hunger Town (20 page)

‘No such thing,' he imitated me in a prunes and prisms voice.

I recalled my previous boss's comment that Nathan had tickets on me. ‘I don't think his sisters like me,' I said.

‘Probably not,' he agreed. ‘It's hard to know if it's because Nathan idolises you or because his adoration isn't reciprocated.' He looked at me solemnly. ‘Either way he can't have you. You're my girl.'

‘Really, Harry,' I protested, ‘don't be ridiculous. I don't belong to anyone.'

He sang softly, ‘You're like a plaintive melody that never sets me free.'

I laughed then. ‘Nobody could be less like a plaintive melody than I am, Harry. And now we're nearly at the railway station.'

I took my bag and boarded the train.

‘See you on Thursday,' he called after me.

My father had responded with amazing calm and restraint to the news he had been sacked. I think that momentarily he had got beyond anger to a state of cynical detachment where there was comfort in expecting the worst in people and even some humour in being proved right. He shrugged and said it was inevitable but that he worried about my mother. ‘She's tired, Judith. I wish she'd ease up on the soup kitchen. There are other women who can help. Even some blokes. It'd keep them out of the pub.' I recalled Herbie and Harry hauling the cauldrons of hot soup and felt comforted by their kindness.

But every morning my mother trudged along Commercial Road to Dale Street and the Salvation Army hall. It was a long trek and she found the return journey after hours of work exhausting. But she wouldn't give it up. ‘It's the least I can do,' she persisted doggedly. She found Commercial Road particularly wearing and commented wearily on the unexpected sensation of finding the road congested with busy people seemingly leading a normal life when there was a depression and she was about to meet a large number of people utterly destitute. It was a peculiar shifting from one world into another, as if traipsing out of bright sunshine into darkness. But then she would add, ‘Maybe all those busy people on the street have problems we don't know about.' She complained about the difficulties of crossing Black Diamond Corner between Commercial Road and St Vincent Street. There was no help for pedestrians in the congestion and confusion of cars, buses, horses and carts and the wretched dock engines on the rail lines. Their bells were useless. Only that morning she had seen a horse and cart collide with a car. The poor horse, although uninjured, trembled with fright.

‘I'm sorry, Eve, that I've lost my job.' He was humble.

She was philosophic. ‘Nobody I know has a husband in a job. We're all in the same boat. We've been lucky up to now, but what will happen to our home here on the hulk, Niels?'

I knew that we paid rent to the shipowners but that my father also acted as caretaker of the expensive equipment.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Maybe they'll be glad to let us stay. Everybody remembers the
City of Singapore
.'

The fire on the
City of Singapore
had happened when I was a child but it was burned into my memory, an event both terrible and wildly exciting. Mr and Mrs Danley had been dining with us when the first thunderous explosion rocked our hulk. Momentarily it seemed to jump out of the water and then lurch sideways straining against the mooring ropes. My father leaped to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor and rushed on deck. ‘Hell!' he shouted. ‘Bloody hell!'

From further along the wharf great balls of fire erupted upwards and outwards to burst asunder in a succession of thunderous explosions. Volcanic heat incinerated the ship. The noise deafened us and we retreated before a searing wind. Firemen with bright metal helmets emerged and receded in the billowing smoke like dancing ghosts. People ran hither and thither panting, shouting, screaming in panic that the fire could spread to other ships.

We watched one fireman caught in an explosion sail like an acrobat into the air and somersault on his head. My mother gasped, 'He'll be killed.' But we heard later that he had survived. His helmet had saved him.

The fire burned for weeks, creeping about the ship, consuming more and more combustibles. Mesmerised I had watched the leaping darting flames that ran like flaming fingers into every little hidey-hole, setting them alight so that, as well as the great fire, there were many smaller feeder fires.

At last the explosions ceased, the fire quietened but still glowed with ugly fervour. When we at last saw the blackened remains a crowd gathered to look and comment, amazed and relieved that the fire had been contained and, of course, conjecturing how it had started, everyone wiser in his opinion than his neighbour. No one had been on board at the time and that was strange. So, of course, there was a suspicion that the shipowners had plotted the fire for insurance. Then someone started a rumour that it had been an anarchist plot and this was taken up in all seriousness.

As we walked back to the hulk my father snorted, ‘Poor bloody anarchists. Get the blame for everything. First they're accused of trying to burn down Sydney and now they've come after the
City of Singapore
. God knows why. It's a ridiculous accusation. It's a great cover up for an insurance fraud.'

Now as my mother recalled this event she looked thoughtful. ‘They may believe it was arson and in this climate the
City of Singapore
might be a lesson to them, a reminder, a warning that they need a caretaker. Perhaps you could point this out to them, Niels.'

‘You mean blame the poor bloody anarchists, throw them to the wolves again?'

My mother looked shamefaced but she laughed. ‘It need only be a hint, Niels, an implication, a suggestion.'

It worked. We were permitted to stay on the hulk rent free so long as my father cared for the winching equipment. The letter from the shipowners confirming that he could continue his tenancy was both a relief and an irritation. A final paragraph instructed him, in dictatorial tones, that under no condition was the hulk to be used as a meeting place for any ‘nefarious activities'. He chucked the letter on the table. ‘Pompous, self-righteous, greedy bastards,' he snarled, his dormant anger fresh again. ‘Treat us as little boys, would they, to jump at their bidding. We all know what they're up to. Bringing in cheap labour to work the ships, scabs to work the waterfront. They hold my home over my head as a threat. I'll give them nefarious activities.' And he moved to rip the letter and pitch it in the river.

My mother snatched it. ‘It's our security, Niels. At least some sort of insurance.' And she placed it under her recipe books in a drawer.

Up until now I had been shyly tentative about sending my cartoons to newspapers. From childhood I had grown accustomed to my drawing being an escape from anything that disturbed or distressed me: a private world like Alice's garden that once entered would be magically protected.

But Miss Marie subjected me to an outsider's comments and criticisms. She was always tactful, always encouraging, but now my work was no longer a private world. I think she understood my initial reluctance to let in any intruder but gradually she winkled me out of my reticence, and I found myself in happy discussions with her.

However now it was imperative that I earned the right to be at art school. It was no longer a private matter, it was also a family one, and a community one. On the one hand we desperately needed any money that I could make, on the other, Miss Marie encouraged me to believe that the political comment of my cartoons helped people understand what was happening to us.

‘Values, Judith,' she explained to me. ‘Artists must assert values and the harder times become the harder we must struggle to do this. There is humanity in your cartoons and above everything else we need that now.'

It was an inspiring thought and for a short time I floated with this glorious vision of myself before I bumped back to the ground. Nevertheless, with her faith and the need of my family for the five shillings I might receive if one of my cartoons was accepted, I set about determinedly drawing copies of them.

The
Despatch
had not responded so I sent my drawing of the unemployed camp by the river to the
Sun News Pictorial
. Maybe they would see it as relevant. Surely there would be camps of the unemployed along the Yarra River in Melbourne.

Mrs Danley asked if she could offer my drawing of her in the soup kitchen, with the caption
Give us this day our daily bread
, to the newsletter of her Anglican church. ‘I'm quite chuffed by it, Judith,' she said, ‘but I want to assure you that it's not vanity that prompts me. It's the editor of the
Despatch
, a devoutly religious man of our church … I'll say no more, Judith. It would be uncharitable of me to point out another's moral discrepancies.' My cartoon appeared in the newsletter and at her request I supplied her with a copy of the two soup kitchen women holding the platter of five loaves and two fishes.

Shortly afterwards I received a letter from the editor of the
Despatch
returning my cartoon of the workers' paradise but requesting permission to re-publish the two cartoons of the soup kitchen. He felt, he said, that they had ‘the right moral impact', and would help all the ‘good women' at the soup kitchen. There was no doubt, in his mind, that charity to the less fortunate was a Christian duty.

I took this statement of high-mindedness with a grain of salt. I also took, with thankfulness, the ten shillings he sent me for publishing my cartoons—five shillings each. My mother insisted that I keep a little for my fares and paper and pencils but most of it went into buying extra food.

I hadn't expected to receive such notoriety nor the warmth of praise. On the street, at the soup kitchen, outside the Labour Exchange, and on the docks, strangers would stop me, shake my hand, pat me on the shoulder or back, or simply say, ‘Good on yer, girlie.' I became ‘Our Judith whose cartoons hit the nail on the head every time'. My mother glowed and trod with a lighter step. My father strutted a little, embarrassed but proud. In our miserable world I had brought a little joy to them and I was elated.

Miss Marie said, ‘They'll tear themselves apart politically at the Port but they'll all agree with your cartoons and their unity will give them confidence.'

‘I think,' I said, retreating from such a grandiose view of me, ‘I think, Miss Marie, that that is a little far-fetched. I'm not ready yet to lead them to the Paris barricades.'

She laughed, but her eyes were intense. ‘When you do I'll be at your side.'

‘No,' I said sharply, ‘not again. I was at a brutal demonstration once. The police nearly killed Harry. I saw it all.'

‘Ah,' she said, ‘your cartoon in the
Barrier Daily Truth
.'

‘Yes. And I don't want to do any more such cartoons.'

She looked wise. ‘You may have no choice, Judith. Sometimes circumstances drag us in against our wills; compel us.' I shook my head and she did not pursue the discussion.

Of course, our hulk had now become a place for intense political argument. Every decision made by the Waterside Workers' Union Executive, the Disputes Committee, the Trades and Labour Council or Parliament and the shipowners was examined, dissected, disputed and pounded out on our galley table. Jock, Pat and Frank sat around the table shouting at each other while Bernie, lost in the language, watched them with eager eyes. Jock, belligerent and pugilistic as always, declared that now was the time for revolution. The workers were ready, readier than they had ever been to throw over the whole bloody state. The Russians had done it, why not them?

‘Och, laddie,' Frank always mimicked his Scottish burr to rile him, ‘don't be a daft blithering idiot. A revolution requires guns and all we've got are baling hooks and stones. Have you ever even fired a gun? Besides I don't know whether I like your communist clap-trap.'

Pat, as Irish as Frank, interrupted: ‘Even when we had guns in Dublin in 1916 we lost. It's not only guns, it's power and organisation. You've never been in a stoush on the losing side, Jock, have you? You bolshies feed yourselves on theories and dreams. I've had enough of dreams. We lost those in Ireland. I came here for a bit of peace. Poverty I'm used to. I can put up with that, but revolution? You can keep it.'

Jock snarled, ‘No guts, the lot of you. If it's not now it'll never be. As unionists we're piss weak. We'll even be forced into a secret ballot over this strike.'

Bernie-Benito, at sea in this altercation, still caught the feeling. At the words ‘union' and ‘secret' he flicked his finger across his throat. ‘Mussolini,' he breathed and began as usual to sing
Avanti popolo
.

‘Shut up, Bernie,' Jock said. ‘But he's got a point.' He glared at the other three. ‘He knows what's in store for us—fascism. It's a creeping death, eh, Benito?'

Bernie again flicked his neck and this time his smile was evil.

‘There'll be no secret ballot if I have my way,' my father growled. ‘We'll throw the bloody ballot box out the door. Let everyone see who votes for what, who votes to betray his mates. No organisation, union or any other, is going to tell me what to do.'

‘Yes,' Frank said. ‘On that we all ought to agree. No secrecy. Let the bastards look us in the eye.'

I had gone into the galley to get a glass of water and at the door watched and heard their argument. Jock looked up and saw me. ‘There's our Judith,' he said. ‘She does bloody good cartoons. Nathan thinks she's a genius. But there's a bit too much charity in them for me. It weakens our cause.'

The strike was inevitable. But despite all the brave talk it was short-lived. There was no cash in the union funds to support members and more and more desperate people turned up at the soup kitchen. Dejected and defeated the unionists straggled back seeking work.