Hunger Town (38 page)

Given my hated work at the Chew It when I was fifteen I should have thought about others like myself. Many of the young men in the Unemployed Workers' Union had sisters and I asked Harry to inquire if any of them worked in the local flour mill. His answer was startling. Many did and often their pittance kept families afloat.

He arranged for me to speak with three of the girls one Sunday afternoon. They arrived shy and uncomfortable and dressed in what they had of Sunday best. They were younger than me but looked older by twenty years. They had the dead white skin of people imprisoned away from the sun for most of the week. Their bloodshot eyes were red-rimmed and stained beneath with heavy purple shadows. They coughed persistently. They were thin.

I asked them about the flour mill, what it was like to work there. They hesitated, fearful that any criticism might endanger their job.

‘What is it that you really want from us, Miss Larsen?' the oldest and sharpest of the three asked. ‘We know you do wonderful cartoons and we have seen some of your drawings. Do you want to ask us questions about our work in the flour mill or is it that you want some drawings of us?'

Her bluntness left me tongue-tied. I had not thought that I would be exploiting their misery by drawing them but now, in the face of her direct question, I realised that was my intention. Mesmerised by my belief that a portrayal of working class suffering would help everyone, I had insensitively assumed that my drawings would be acceptable to these girls.

One of the girls flushed. ‘It is very kind of you, Miss Larsen,' she said, ‘to think of us but we are not very beautiful these days.' And the third girl added, hastily, ‘Our families wouldn't like to see us looking so poorly. They feel guilty. It's hard, Miss Larsen, to see ourselves in mirrors, still young but looking so ugly.'

I grew hot with shame, pity and embarrassment. ‘Of course,' I said. ‘I wouldn't think of drawing you without your permission. Please forgive me. If you are unhappy I never would …' I floundered to a stop. ‘Let me make you all some tea.'

They accepted but in the main it was a silent stiff uncomfortable afternoon. I was afraid to ask any questions in case they suspected my motives and they were shy and diffident.

When Harry returned home he asked, ‘How'd it go with the girls, Jude?'

‘It was terrible. So sad, Harry. I couldn't draw them. All they want is to be pretty and young again.'

As usual Nathan visited regularly and occasionally Jock and Frank joined us. Jock could only listen to Nathan's ponderous lecturing for a short time before he became restless and ended the sermonising with, ‘Give us a break, laddie. My head fair aches with stretching itself around these ideas. How about a tune, Harry?' And he strode to the piano, opened the lid, and before Nathan had finished his last sentence thumped a few loud notes to silence him.

Harry grinned at me behind Nathan's back, went to the piano, pulled out the stool, settled himself comfortably and played a few bars of ‘Glasgow belongs to me'. And Jock puffed out his chest, looked surprisingly sentimental, and sang,
I'm only a common auld worrrking chap, as anyone here can see, but when I gets a coupla drinks on a Saturdee Glasgee belangs to me.

And if Frank was there he would demand that Harry play ‘The Wearing of the Green' and we would all beef out:
Oh, Paddy, dear, and did you hear the news that's going round? The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground. Saint Patrick's day no more we'll keep, his colours can't be seen for there's a cruel law against the wearing of the green.

And then, because we had made ourselves sad by the losses of the left, in tribute to Bernie-Benito we all sang ‘Bandiera Rossa':
Avanti popolo alla riscossa, bandiera rossa, bandierra rossa.

But Nathan never joined in our singing. When he had gone home I asked, ‘Do you think he can, Harry?'

‘What? Sing?'

‘Yes.'

‘Probably not. Or not well. Nathan wouldn't like to do anything he wasn't good at.'

‘That must be restricting.'

‘I suppose so. But he seems contented enough.'

‘He never has longings?'

‘Longings, Jude? He wants a communist state. I suppose that's a longing.'

‘No. I meant personal and private ones.'

He grinned. ‘None I've ever heard of. But, of course, he did have tickets on you.'

‘That's past, Harry, and you know it. And I'm not sure it was ever really true.'

‘Oh, it was true all right. Sometimes I wonder …' he hesitated. ‘I feel a bit uncomfortable because he talks of you as if he has some special knowledge or understanding of you hidden from me.'

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Indeed? Then the poor man's deluded, Harry.'

‘Yes, I know this. But it still makes me feel uncomfortable. It's a strange part of his character that he can't always face the truth.'

My thoughts lingered over the girls from the flour mill and I drew two cartoons to send to
Women Today
. One was a drawing of a baker's shop with rows of bread in the window. Under it was an advertisement for the wares: WE CAN GUARRANTEE THAT ONLY 5 GIRLS FAINTED MAKING THE FLOUR FOR OUR BREAD. A second cartoon featured a flour mill as background and in front of it a fat factory owner holds a loaf of bread announcing,
This is the staff of life
. A thin hollow-eyed girl beside him protests,
I wish flour wasn't the stuff of our lives
.

I sent them off explaining that the working conditions for girls in the flour mills were appalling and suggesting that perhaps
Women Today
might like to look into the situation.

A couple of editions later there were my cartoons and a full-page article. I felt much better about how I'd treated the girls.

Usually Harry and Nathan and other comrades who came to meetings at our house discussed Party affairs amongst themselves and then went home. I was happy not to be involved and usually worked at my drawings in the front room. But this night Harry asked me if I would join them because there was something they wanted to talk over with me.

I didn't know why the thought of Nathan wanting to talk something over with me made me jumpy but it did. Instinctively I knew that whatever he might propose I would baulk at it. As always he seemed nervous with me and far from initiating the conversation he deferred to Harry. Cunning, I thought. What does the slippery rat want now?

‘Well,' I asked, and was none too friendly. Harry hesitated.

I knew my antagonism to Nathan was a constant source of embarrassment to him and that I had put him on the third point of a very awkward triangle. But to put it bluntly I didn't trust Nathan. He and his sisters used people. Once I was direct about it with Harry.

‘He may, Jude, but it's for the bigger cause.'

‘It doesn't matter,' I snapped, ‘whether it's for himself or for what he believes is some greater cause. He still uses people and I don't like it.' And for good measure I added, ‘And so do his sisters.'

He grimaced. ‘And you accuse the comrades of being puritanical. Listen to yourself, Jude.'

‘Oh, you, Harry,' I joked.

He grinned. ‘Oh, you, Judith. You're such a card.'

Now I looked suspiciously from Harry's reluctant face to Nathan's bland and uncommunicative one.

‘OK, boys,' I said, attempting jocularity, ‘out with it. What's up your sleeves?'

Harry relaxed but Nathan compressed his lips. Objectionable prune, I thought.

‘Would you like a little holiday, Jude?'

‘Holiday?' Now I was even more suspicious. We couldn't afford a holiday. My God, I suddenly thought. Images of Ted Sloan's speech sprang to my mind. My God, they're proposing we go to the Soviet Union. Ted Sloan's inspired them to some stupidity.

‘No,' I protested violently, ‘I'm not going to Russia. You, Nathan, can keep your fantasies to yourself.'

‘Russia?' Harry was bemused. ‘Why would we go to Russia?'

‘Oh,' I said, feeling foolish. ‘I thought … Ted Sloan …'

He shouted with laughter and hugged me. ‘No, Jude, Mildura.'

‘Mildura? Why Mildura?'

Harry couldn't resist it. ‘Because it's not as far as Russia.'

Despite Nathan's sour look at our levity, we both rocked with laughter. At last I said, ‘What's going on in Mildura?'

Nathan thought it time to intervene. This wasn't being treated with the solemnity it deserved. ‘We want to set up a branch of the Party there.'

Still laughing I said, ‘And can't the Mildurians or the Mildurianites …?' Once again Harry and I shrieked with mirth. ‘Can't they do it for themselves?'

‘No.' Nathan was terse. ‘They need our guidance.'

‘Mm,' I said, still chortling. Once Harry and I got into this hilarious mood it was hard to break out of it. ‘So they need guidance? And Nathan here,' I threw him a provocative look, ‘is just the person to do it? Why do you need Harry and me, Nathan?'

But Harry, catching Nathan's disapproval, made a good job of being serious again. ‘I'm going there to learn, Jude, how to set up a Party cell. But I said I'd only go if you'd come, too.'

I guessed from Nathan's expression that there'd been an argument and Nathan had met that unexpected streak of stubbornness in Harry. I had my mouth open to say, ‘That was brave of you, Harry,' but shut it. I was learning that there was only a certain tactful distance I could go in criticising Nathan to Harry.

‘How long for?' I asked.

‘Just a couple of weeks.' Harry was eager. ‘You'll come?'

‘Of course,' I smiled at him lovingly, ‘but only because it's not as far as Russia.'

He chuckled. ‘You are a card, Jude. There, Nathan, I told you she'd come.'

Nathan smiled, one of his habitual tight smiles. How Harry managed to get on with such a humourless man always astonished me.

We left the Port very early. Jock and Nathan sat in the front to share the driving, Harry and I in the back. Jock had borrowed Pat's car for the couple of weeks we'd be away. I thought it very generous of Pat and remembered how he'd ferried Harry and me home after the fracas in Victoria Square. It was an old car that squeaked and rattled and jolted over potholes. I had packed a basket of food for our journey and hoped Jock and Nathan had done the same. I had also borrowed from Miss Marie and Winnie a couple of vacuum flasks, which I filled with weak black tea. Milk I couldn't carry.

The electric streetlights mounted on ornate lamp-posts dropped rings of hazy brightness but beyond them the shadows were long and dark. Few were abroad and we passed only a couple of other cars. Briefly their headlights pierced the darkness and long shards of light momentarily illuminated what had been secret and forbidden. Then the night flowed in again and the shadows seemed even blacker.

Then we were through Adelaide, travelling north on the Sturt Highway. We passed through Gawler in the darkness. I peered out the car window trying to see something of it. ‘It's no good,' I said, ‘I can't see a thing.'

‘Wheest, lassie,' Jock snorted, ‘dinna fash yersel. There's not much to see. There used to be industry here but the depression's killed that.'

The sky glowed a soft grey. A few streaks of pink colour tentatively eased over the horizon and in a burst of enthusiasm the sun leaped up and the whole sky, suffused in red and gold, shouted to us that it was day.

In the darkness the road had been mysterious; the air from the part-open window cold on my face; the scrubby trees mere silhouettes in our headlights. Now it all opened up, a flat, dry monochromatic landscape of browns, golds and ochres, stretching away on either side, while the road straight ahead and receding smaller and smaller was a perfect lesson in perspective.

Several kangaroos bounded out of the bush, keeping pace with the car. The power and rhythm of their easy levitation thrilled me. Then, for no apparent reason, the largest of them swerved across our path. Jock braked furiously. The car slithered dangerously and the kangaroo shot past in front of us, the others following.

‘Stupid bugger,' Jock swore. ‘Heads the size of peanuts. No wonder there's no brain inside.' I was shaken but amused. Kangaroos wouldn't be a road hazard in Glasgow. We disturbed a large lizard on the verge of the road, immobile and sunning himself, head cocked in our direction. In the flick of a moment he was gone, back into the bush.

We stopped for breakfast, which we ate either sitting in the car or standing around in the morning sunshine. I needed to spend a penny but there were no penny-in- the-slot public toilets here. Harry warned me to be very careful of snakes, so I crept over the dry crackling leaves and grass, suspiciously inspecting every black twig before I stepped on it. I found a conveniently large tree stump I could hide behind and, having carefully checked the area, cautiously squatted down. The only thing I disturbed was a nest of large red ants, which rushed frantically from their hole, comically reared on their back legs, and waved their antennas belligerently. I was quite sure that they'd give me a nasty bite and kept clear of them.

The day grew hotter. There were some sheep, poor grey dusty creatures and ahead of us the road shimmered like the shifting of light over water. It was my first experience of a mirage. It was an eerie desolate landscape. The small towns we passed looked as if most of the life had been drained out of them.

‘God, it's monotonous,' Harry grumbled.

But I didn't think so. An endlessly pastel landscape, yes, but there were subtleties of colour in the tones of brown and the silver-grey of the eucalypts. It was all new to me and I was fascinated. The very size of it left me awe-struck. Until now I had had no visual concept that I lived on the edge of such a vast continent. For a moment, in the face of such timelessness, I wondered why we were heading for Mildura and so taken up with the transient affairs of people.