Hunger Town (36 page)

I interjected impatiently, ‘You don't understand. The police have been raiding the houses of the communists. My husband is a communist. He may have been picked up and taken into custody. Have you heard nothing of all this?'

He pursed his mouth. ‘A communist? Oh, my dear, how unfortunate. Yes, we have heard something, Mrs Grenville, but we don't involve ourselves, either in what the communists do or what happens to them. Our responsibility is to our union members.'

I glared at him. I was beginning to see red at his glibness. ‘But I've attended communist meetings in your Hall.'

He shrugged. ‘A business arrangement. We hire out the Hall to many organisations. It doesn't mean we support or approve of them. It's a free country, Mrs Grenville.'

I mocked him. ‘Is that so? Not if you're a communist it seems.'

He looked at me pityingly. ‘I'd like to help you, Mrs Grenville, but there's nothing I can do.'

He stood up and held the door open for me. I went out feeling so lonely and isolated I could have wept again. That the communists were an integral influential part of the community was only an illusion. I knew now that in reality they were small, unpopular and vulnerable.

I rode my bike home and, because I still fulminated from the interview and was now infuriated with Harry for not contacting me, I stopped at a milk shop and bought myself a threepenny double-headed ice cream.

There was a wooden seat on the edge of the pavement and I leaned my bike against it, sat down, and licked my ice cream in the sun. Nobody took any notice of me and that I thought bitterly is how society really is: all of us individuals intent on our own concerns, quite separate from each other. So what price communism? Or any other messianic ideal to save the human race?

Sitting in the sun, eating an ice cream, minding my own business was the way to go. I was still hopping mad with Harry for being a member of the bloody Communist Party, for not telling me where he was, for causing me a night of misery and a humiliating session with a union organiser who thought me a deceived hardly-done-by little woman. I was fed up with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

Late that afternoon Harry arrived home. I heard his key turn in the lock and rushed to the door. He looked unhurt. He even smiled at me. He dared to look normal and smiling. He had barely set foot inside when I screeched at him, ‘Where have you been?'

And I hit him.

He grabbed my arm. ‘Whoa, Judith, whoa. What's all this?'

‘Don't whoa me,' I yelled at him. ‘Don't you dare.' And I tried to hit him again.

‘Stop it,' he said, ‘stop it, Judith. What's the matter with you?'

‘Matter!' I shouted. ‘Matter? You've the front to ask me what the matter is. You've been missing for nearly two days. No message to me. No reassurance that you were OK. Jock here in a panic. Your bloody communist papers,
Imprecor
of all things, and I had to race to the hulk to get my father to chuck the lot into the river. No help from you. My mother sick with terror. All of us frantic about you. And you ask me what the matter is.'

He was quiet. ‘I sent a note.'

‘Oh yes? And that told me a lot. And you didn't keep your promise. I waited for you all night imagining …' I choked, ‘imagining Victoria Square.'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘I never thought of that. Never dreamed that might occur to you.'

Suddenly the anger drained out of me, leaving me empty and weary. ‘Where have you been, Harry? Didn't you know about the police raids?'

‘Yes. But we had a more important matter to deal with.'

‘More important than one or both of us being arrested?' Disbelieving, I glared at him.

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me again, Harry, so that I can grasp it. I can make neither head nor tail of all this. You disappear for nearly two days. I'm distraught with worry that you've been arrested and beaten to death. You don't tell me where you are or why. And now you inform me that there was something more important than all this.'

He looked uncomfortable but unrepentant. ‘I'm sorry, Judith, that you've had a difficult time but the police have put out a warrant for Bernie-Benito's arrest. And if they catch him they'll deport him to Mussolini's Italy and we all know that the Black Shirts will murder him. We had to hide him and spirit him away.'

‘Bernie-Benito? Deport him? Can they do that?'

‘Of course. He's not an Australian citizen.'

‘But there's lots of people here who aren't Australian citizens and no one bothers them.'

‘They're not communists, Judith.'

‘No,' I said. ‘Oh, Harry, how awful. How bloody awful.'

‘Yes, it is awful.'

‘Where did you hide him and where has he gone?'

‘At my mother's at first.' He gave the ghost of a grin and I realised that until now there had been no real humour in his smile. ‘My mother thought he was charming and asked him if anyone in his family were an opera singer. He didn't fully understand her but he caught the word opera and sang a few bars of Puccini's ‘Your tiny hand is frozen' and then he took her hand and looked into her eyes as soulfully as only Bernie can and she was entranced. Actually, Jude, he has a really fine tenor voice and I never knew.'

He had followed me into the kitchen and now sat at the table while I boiled the kettle and put out some food. ‘Have you eaten?'

‘Not recently. I'm starved.'

‘And after your mother's, what then?'

‘Pat had brought him to Mum's in his car and he went off to a saleyard and picked up a second-hand Ford pretty cheaply. The Party paid for it. Lots of cars have been turned in for a song because of the depression. There's another young Italian in the Party and he agreed to drive Bernie to Mildura where they can lose themselves amongst the Italian fruit-pickers. I waited until they left.'

I poured our tea and sat opposite him. ‘Was all this raiding and searching because of Bernie-Benito?'

‘No. He's just a part of it. Jock said you got rid of the copies of
Imprecor
.'

‘Yes. Or my father did.'

‘Thanks, Judith.'

‘Jock came. He helped.'

‘Yes, he said he would.'

‘You sent him? So he knew about Bernie?'

‘Yes.'

‘And neither of you told me?'

‘No. We decided not to. Sometimes, Jude, it's safer not to know.'

I took a deep breath but remained silent. I smarted from a feeling of betrayal but put it aside. What he said made good sense. I hadn't the faintest idea how I would have reacted if the police had questioned me about Bernie and I had known his whereabouts.

‘Will he be safe in Mildura?'

He shrugged. ‘We can only hope so, Jude. He's not very good at being in the shade. There's nothing more we can do.'

For the next couple of weeks every knock at the door sent my heart racing but no police visited us. I had been terrified that if they came searching for Bernie I might, through sheer nervousness, betray that I knew where he was. But gradually things returned to normal and the police raids, although still gossiped about with excitement and indignation, became events of the past with no more importance than all the other police confrontations.

I received two copies of
Women Today
in the mail and as it was a mild morning I took a chair into the backyard and sat in the sun to read them. I liked them. They were intelligent and without pretension. Harry would be delighted if I contributed because the magazine was the official organ of the women's committee of the Unemployed Workers' Union. Now I thought, with some amusement, there was no escape for me. I would have to send them some work.

The magazine emphasised women's interests and problems. There were recipes and advice on how to feed a family of eight on two shillings and sixpence a meal. There was an article on the need for equal pay for women who were sweated in the clothing factories as cheap labour on one pound eighteen shillings a week. But aside from domestic issues there was international news: articles about the new Spanish republic and what it hoped to achieve; pleas to women to boycott Japanese goods because of Japanese imperialism in China; praise for the efforts of the League of Nations to secure world peace. And overall there was an emphasis that women should unite against war.

The enclosed letter from Mrs King expressed her delight at my interest and offered me a small payment for each of my drawings. She asked if I could send two each week. I wasn't sure whether they expected my sketches to illustrate a particular article but as no mention was made of this I took from my press several of women at the soup kitchen. If they accepted these then I could send others of women in the march.

It was a comforting feeling to be sought after. The more established I became the less I worried about my work being accepted and the less I panicked when I received a rare refusal. Recently I had expressed my fears to Harry and he had looked amazed.

‘Heavens, Jude, why do you always worry about people accepting your cartoons? Everyone knows you're famous.'

I took this with a grain of salt. Being known at the Port didn't make me either famous or known to everybody. But little by little I came to realise that my work was known and respected well beyond the confines of Port Adelaide. And
Women Today
was another step in that direction.

I arranged with Winnie to have a day out with her in Adelaide. Lunch at a small cafe on North Terrace and then take in a movie. I was fed up with being frugal and resolved to have more confidence that my work would bring in a secure income. I took the train and Winnie met me at the station. As always she gave me a huge hug. With her arm linked in mine she said, ‘I've brought the newspaper program of films that are on in the city. We can decide over lunch.'

‘Anything,' I said, ‘except a horror movie. They are so ridiculous and I can't get involved.'

‘I love them,' she said. ‘It's great to get a thrill and know that all the time it's make-believe.'

‘Well, then, a compromise.'

We crossed North Terrace outside the station and walked slowly on.

‘I saw Harry a couple of weeks ago. I called in to see my aunt. Dad likes me to visit her occasionally to keep an eye on her.'

‘You're good with her, Winnie. I know Harry's grateful.'

‘He had a friend with him, Jude. The most gorgeous man. I think he was Italian. He had that smouldering sombre Rudolph Valentino look. And when I introduced myself—Harry's so neglectful, I even suspected that he hadn't wanted to introduce me—that lovely man looked at me with eyes like liquid chocolate. Really, Judith, I could hardly breathe. I had to tell you. Do you know who he could have been? And Harry looked so shifty.'

I tried to sound casual. ‘He's a friend of Harry's.'

She was impatient. ‘Yes, but do you know him?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well?' Eager-eyed, she waited.

I would have to tell her. ‘His name is Bernie. Bernie-Benito.'

‘Why that?'

‘Because he shares a name with Benito Mussolini and isn't a fascist.'

She giggled. ‘You're talking in riddles, Judith.'

‘He's just a friend of Harry's, Winnie.'

But she was alerted. ‘Come clean, Jude. What's the mystery?'

I hesitated for a moment but the incident was over, Bernie-Benito was gone, I needn't say where, and the police were off our backs.

‘Bernie-Benito is a communist and the police were chasing him. They want to deport him. Harry was hiding him.'

‘Goodness, Jude. Don't you mix with anyone but communists these days?'

I grinned at her. ‘Them and their sympathisers.'

‘And Harry was hiding him?'

‘Yes.'

‘At my Auntie May's?'

‘So I understand.'

Winnie had begun to laugh. ‘But, Jude, Auntie May couldn't keep a secret. She doesn't understand anything. She's quite dippy.'

I caught her merriment. ‘Yes, I know she's quite dippy. I suppose that's why Harry took him there.'

We both rocked with laughter.

‘Oh, Jude,' Winnie gasped, ‘Auntie May brought out some tea and cakes for him and I'll swear the cakes were a month old because they had little specks of grey mould on them. Harry wasn't fast enough to stop him and your Bernie took one and ate it and didn't show by so much as a flicker that it must have tasted vile.'

We shrieked with laughter again. ‘Poor Harry,' I said.

Winnie choked. ‘What a pity the police didn't come. Auntie May could have offered them some mouldy cakes, too. So that's why the old car was parked outside. I wondered. I knew it wasn't Harry's or yours. Knew my aunt didn't have visitors who drive a beat-up old Ford.'

More sober now, I said, ‘They got him away.'

Her eyes still twinkled. ‘I think so, although at the time I didn't expect the old Ford to make it beyond the next corner. So Bernie-Benito's a communist? And Harry was shielding him?'

‘Yes.'

‘My brave and foolish cousin. That Harry. One day he'll really get himself into trouble.'

‘Thanks for that, Winnie. I like to be reassured.'

‘Well,' she said, ‘you do like to hear the truth. You'd know if I pretended. And I am family.'

We had reached the cafe. There were chairs and tables outside.

‘A-la-Parisian style,' Winnie said and plonked herself down. ‘What'll we have? They make delicious chicken sandwiches here and the best Ceylon tea.'

Several pots of tea later, and some cream cakes to top up the sandwiches, we were still gossiping and it was too late to go to the matinee.

Later that week Harry and I, my mother and father, and sundry members of the Port Communist Party arrived at the Empire Theatre in Adelaide to hear an address by Ted Sloan who had just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union.