Hunger Town (32 page)

Harry sat opposite me at our own little kitchen table, staring at the cheque and looking thoughtful.

‘Isn't it marvellous, Harry? Blessings on your uncle. Now we can live like kings for two whole years and after that there'll probably be no depression, you'll have a job and I'll be a successful cartoonist.'

What with the wine and our good fortune I floated in a euphoric pool of well-being and a belief that now anything in our lives was possible. He continued to finger the cheque, unresponsive to my enthusiasm.

‘What's the matter, Harry? Are you concerned that your uncle couldn't afford it? Is there something I don't know about Winnie's family? Something you're hiding? We could give some to your mother.'

Now I was anxious, guilty to be so overjoyed by our good fortune.

He laughed awkwardly. ‘No, darling, I was only thinking. It's nothing.'

‘We ought to talk about “nothing”. You are worried about something.'

‘Not at all.' He jumped up. ‘How about a tune?' and with a sort of strange desperate defiance he lifted the lid and plunged into ‘If you knew Susie like I know Susie'. Puzzled, I cleared the table. It was now quite late. After eating we had all had a sing-song around the piano, Harry revelling in the company and the music.

‘We should think about turning in, Harry,' I said casually. Perhaps this was what was worrying him.

I went to have a wash and put on my best nightie. When I returned to the bedroom he had changed into his pyjamas and was propped up in bed waiting for me.

‘Shall I put out the light?' I asked.

‘No. I want to talk to you, Judith.'

‘Yes.' I jumped into bed beside him. ‘Fire away. Spit it out. I'm listening.'

I cuddled up to him. I was relieved. Now, perhaps, I would hear what had worried him. It couldn't be all that serious. I waited.

He fumbled for words. At last he got it out and it would have been better if he had remained silent.

‘Judith, I want to give some of that two hundred pounds to the Communist Party.'

All the breath sucked out of my body. ‘You what?' I was surprised that I could speak and that my words were so steady and cool.

‘I want to give some of the two hundred pounds to the Communist Party.' But he wouldn't look at me.

‘No!' I said, so violently that I even surprised myself. ‘No!'

I pulled away from him and he cringed. He reached out a hand to me. I shoved it aside and he flinched.

‘Half of it is mine.' He was surly. ‘You can have a hundred pounds and I can have a hundred. That's fair. And I can do with my share whatever I like. We're supposed to donate to the Party. How else can it keep going? And I'm ashamed because I never have anything to give.'

‘And you've nothing now.' My voice was tight and furious. ‘We have to help your mother and my parents and we have to live. You give your hundred away and then we have to live on mine.'

‘I don't plan to give it all away, Judith, just …'

‘I don't want to know about “just”. You're not giving one penny to the Communist Party.'

Beside myself with rage and a sense of betrayal, I threw back the bedclothes, sprang out of bed, and stood trembling on the bare floor.

‘Look at me, Harry!' But he refused.

I could hear myself, strident, screeching. I knew that I should stop, be quiet and reasonable, discuss whatever Harry wanted, but I was seized both by disappointment and panic. I knew that Harry had joined the Communist Party and that he admired Nathan. I had even jibed, ‘Simon says,' when he repeated Nathan's dictums. And Harry had always side-stepped my comments with his: ‘A socialist state will pay me to dance, Judith.' It had all seemed light-hearted, but now it wasn't. It was a serious intrusion into our newly married life and I wasn't prepared for it.

Bugger Nathan, I thought. This was his doing. His and his two poisonous sisters. ‘Let's get this clear, Harry. Our money is our money. We don't halve it so you can throw yours away uselessly and then live on mine. We share everything and decide together what's important. If you don't want that then we have no marriage.'

I stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Shaking with fury, I pulled the hanging switch for the light in my workroom. It was only a pale yellow effulgence. Feverishly I dragged some pages of unfinished cartoons and drawings from the press, plonked them on the table, picked up my pencil, and prepared to work. If Harry was going to give our money away, then I'd better start supporting us in earnest. But, of course, I couldn't work. I just sat there, shivering with distress.

Half an hour later Harry found me. ‘Judith,' he whispered from the doorway, ‘I'm really sorry. I can't imagine what a fool I've been. Of course you're right. Please, Judith, forgive me. I've always been an irresponsible idiot but I'll try to do better.'

He came to my side and stroked my hair. I stiffened. He bent and kissed the nape of my neck. ‘Please, darling, come back to bed.'

‘And you won't give our money away?'

‘No. Of course not.'

‘Never?'

‘No, never. I promise.'

He put his arms about me and sang softly, ‘What'll I do when skies are blue and you're not here, what'll I do?'

‘Don't, Harry,' I said wearily. ‘Please don't always sing that song. Sometimes it makes me sad.'

‘And I've given you enough sadness for tonight.'

He pulled me to my feet and cradled me. ‘There,' he said. He had come in without his pyjama top and his skin was smooth and creamy. I touched it and found it warm. He looked down at me. My nightie had slipped off my shoulder and he bent and kissed my breast.

‘You're so beautiful, Judith.'

And as his body was warm and urgent against mine I recalled the Indian boys leaping into the sea, and laughing Ganesh with his cotton garments clinging about the little knob between his thighs, and Joe Pulham's reluctance to explain to me about Aristophanes'
Lysistrata
. ‘Not yet, Nearly-Twelve,' he had apologised. ‘When you are older.' Now I thought with secret amusement I could say to Joe, there's no need to explain anything to me. I'm no longer Nearly-Twelve and I've discovered it all myself.

The following day our happiness of the previous night was tinged with a little constraint. Neither of us could completely put aside our dreadful row. I felt ashamed to have been so harsh. Harry, I knew, felt a degree of resentment. I made us some breakfast and we were awkward with each other. We had been friends for years. We had shared happy experiences and some terrible ones but today it seemed that we were strangers, meeting for the first time. The night's events had made us closer but at the same time more distant, plunging us into a foreign country where we were wary of the unfamiliar language and its hidden meanings. Expectations, once casual, were now entangled in intimacy; stronger, yet at the same time, more fragile.

I had strolled confidently into marriage, expecting only a continuation of what was familiar. Now I knew it to be a state more complex, more delicate and more easily broken.

I looked across the table at Harry. Seemingly he was absorbed in his porridge but his eating was automatic and his face so usually merry and confident looked sober, even worried.

‘If you haven't any plans for today, Judith,' he said cautiously, ‘I should go to the Labour Exchange and see if there is any work.'

Immediately, with a rush of guilt, I knew that he was doing this because I had shouted about money. I didn't know how to handle this. ‘We should be together for the day,' I mumbled. It was another lovely sunny morning.

‘We could go in to Adelaide perhaps. Stroll through the gardens. Or to the Semaphore. Take tea at the pavilion. We could go out,' I said humbly.

He looked at me gratefully. ‘You'd like that?'

‘Yes.' I smiled at him lovingly. ‘We can't afford a honeymoon.' I stopped, confused. Here I was talking about money again.

But he rescued me. ‘No,' he was firm. ‘We can't. No one can these days. But we can go out. Put on your best dress, darling. Where will we go? I'm at your service, ma'am,' and he jumped up and bowed to me with a grin.

‘Oh, Harry, you …' I laughed. He hugged me.

I put on my wedding dress once more and my pretty hat and we caught the tram to the Semaphore. At a little cafe overlooking the beach we ordered tea and cakes. It was low tide and the sea had receded leaving pale green threads of water between mauve sand banks. How tranquil it was. Why had I no longings to be a painter? Why did I choose to always comment on the turbulence of political life, which in the end was more ephemeral than this?

Thousands of us, not only from the Port but from all over Adelaide and its surrounds, joined the march of protest against the removal of beef from the food rations. Later it came to be known as the Beef March, but I called it the Hunger March. Harry agreed. He said that to call it a hunger march described it accurately and united us with all the other poor starving sods in England and Europe taking to the streets.

It was eight miles from the Port to Treasury Place in Adelaide. All along the route police harassed us: for walking on the tram lines or train lines, for obstructing the traffic. When they diverted us onto footpaths they pestered us for causing congestion and inconvenience to the general public.

We ignored their petty irritations and complied with instructions. We gritted our teeth and refused to be provoked into reprisals. However we persisted in shouting our slogan from the Free Speech Movement: THE STREETS BELONG TO THE WORKERS and WORK OR FULL-MAINTENANCE.

By the time our Port contingent arrived in Adelaide the roads leading to Treasury Place were overflowing. It was both inspiring and dispiriting to see such a show of strength but know it was strength derived from desperation—so many battles behind us, so little hope or expectation for the future.

From the back of the crowd we could neither see nor hear the speakers. I think there were several Labor Party politicians, probably, as my father growled, trying to gain mileage for their electoral hopes. In reality they never offered us more than anyone else. I thought bitterly of the spate of letters to the
Despatch
, particularly the one that expressed nastily the opinion that government should put an end to the ‘irritating exactions of meeting the cost of the dole'.

The crowd was becoming tired of trying to listen. Frustrated and exhausted by a long and seemingly fruitless march, they were ripe for immediate action, an outlet for their rage. I felt the wave of restlessness surge around me. Harry, who had shinned up a lamppost to see better, now dropped beside me.

‘There's the usual contingents of mounted and foot police guarding the front of the Treasury building. I don't like it, Judith.' He glanced behind us. The crowd there was less packed in.

‘Come,' he said, ‘quickly. Before we are trapped.'

He grasped my hand and we edged our way through the people behind us. They gave way. No one was interested in us. Their attention was directed towards the front of the march.

‘What's happening?' The urgent question was repeated over and over, but remained unanswered.

A couple of boys followed Harry's example and climbed lampposts. From above some people leaned out of the windows of buildings. They were called to: ‘What's happening?'

‘Looks like a fight,' someone shouted.

Around us people started to sweep forward. Harry dragged me off the road to the footpath and we squeezed against the wall of a building, resisting the headlong rush until once again a space opened before us. We broke through into a quieter open street.

‘We're not going to be beaten up again,' Harry panted. ‘What is the point?'

It was sickening to think of another defeat for all these poor people and not be part of it, but Harry was right. To end up injured again would serve no purpose. And yet, what did serve any purpose?

I looked down at Harry's hand holding mine. It was strong and comforting. ‘Oh, Harry,' I wept, ‘it's awful to be always defeated. Will it always be like this? It's so unjust.'

We walked quietly and he continued to grip my hand. ‘I don't know, Judith. I'd like to believe it isn't so. The communists assert that these are the death throes of capitalism and that given another ten years it will collapse.'

Ten years, I thought. In terms of history this was nothing, a tiny dot on the map of time. Aristotle had written on moderation 2000 years ago but in my life span ten years seemed forever. How queer our personal measurement of time. So would we go on squeezing our lives through the narrow jaws of poverty for another ten years? And then what? A brighter future? A brighter communist future? It was a remote dream.

But not to Harry, it seemed. ‘Think, Judith,' he said. ‘The Russian Revolution took place barely fourteen years ago and look what changes that has brought about. And now we are seeing a successful socialist alliance in Spain. It'll be the second communist state in the world. You'll see.'

I knew that the second Spanish republic was on the verge of coming to power. It was an alliance of several left-wing groups, including the communists, and its success would herald a victory over the powerful organs of the Catholic Church, the conservative conclave of rich landowners and the army. For the workers to defeat these mighty Goliaths through the ballot box would be a triumph reminiscent of the overthrow of the Russian state. No wonder Harry and his comrades had stars in their eyes.

As he spoke, his face flushed with enthusiasm, I realised that he really did envisage and believe in a socialist utopia. For Harry none of the contradictions of fallible humans sullied his great dream. To him it was like the rhapsody of a piece of music that leads inevitably to a great and satisfying resolution. And was I the poorer for my doubts? My cartoons were grounded not in some great faith but in a more savage awareness of what I saw as the gap between dream and reality.