Hunger Town (4 page)

And now I knew his eyes were grey. Jubilantly I remembered my challenge to myself. I would take myself to the pictures and see a new Mary Pickford film and maybe buy a new dress.

On Sundays I put on my best dress, hat and gloves and went to the Botanic Gardens to stroll with my closest friend Winifred, secretly nicknamed ‘Weepy Winnie' because in bursts of sentimentality she would dissolve into tears. Just about anything set her off: a lost kitten mewing under a bush; a ragged child begging for a penny. Her feelings were utterly indiscriminate so she was mocked, but gently so. I was certain that if Winnie had not been pretty her outbursts would have appeared incongruous and feeble-minded.

She had no doubt about her attractions. Sometimes I thought unkindly that she cultivated me because by comparison she shone more brilliantly. Her pansy-brown eyes were large and soulful. Her mouth was what romantic novelists called a rosebud, her skin a glorious pink and white, her face a delicious heart-shape. She had the knack of filling her eyes with tears when she wanted to seem affected and the tears would drown the pansies, overflow and run down her cheeks but never did her eyes or nose redden and she never sniffed.

Her art amazed me. She only had to glance at a boy or a man for them to liquefy. They blushed, gushed, stammered, took her hand, then, overcome with embarrassment at their private infatuation, released it and blushed, gushed and stammered again. Even older women pronounced that she was a sweet girl and in many ways she was. There was no malice in her.

I thought her feather-brained but liked her and enjoyed her bright company. She tried to take me in hand and improve my dress sense but I was plain and didn't see the point of dressing myself up. My clothes were clean, neat but unimaginative. They didn't attract anyone's eyes and for that I was grateful. I always felt that I would look rather silly flirting and consequently was more awkward and self-conscious than I needed to be.

Weepy Winnie flirted outrageously.

We had wandered along North Terrace and passing through the elegant cast-iron portals entered a green oasis bright with spring flowers. It was a mild day, pleasant before the summer heat and there was a mixture of the stylishly dressed and those shabby in ragged coats and shoes with broken soles that flapped as they walked. Those dressed well walked with confidence and chatted and laughed with ease and ignored the ill clad who, unable to compete and aware of their difference, often hurried by with bent heads as if shamed by their misfortune. I had the impression that rather like the shadowy wharf rats in my dreams they were there and yet not there.

We strolled along the paths, passed the statues of two white dogs that children had polished from constant patting, and loitered before the goddess Amazon astride her rearing steed and defending herself against a tiger. I wondered briefly about this mythical world that meant so little to me. We peeked in the windows of the Palm House with its mellow creamy stone work and grand glass dome. Still chatting we meandered across the finely trimmed grass and as we emerged from behind some trees I saw a man with a starved expression bend swiftly and surreptitiously to snatch at a cigarette butt. He had first glanced about him, like some hunted animal that sees a tid-bit but can't gather enough courage to steal it, then, having cautiously assured itself of its safety, makes a quick grab. A sweet statue of Diana gazed down on this moment of humiliation with marble indifference.

I halted, shocked by his misery. Winnie tugged at my arm. ‘Don't look,' she whispered. ‘Come away.'

I shook her off. ‘Why not?'

The ubiquitous tears filled her eyes. ‘He's embarrassed. Poor man. He's ashamed. He doesn't want us to see.'

She was right but her tears irritated me. ‘Stop crying, Winnie. It's ridiculous.'

This time she actually sniffed. ‘Seeing things like this spoils my afternoon.'

It had certainly spoiled mine.

It was this Sunday afternoon, even more than slavery at the Chew It and Spew It, which gave me a sharp sense of class division.

Winnie, in her pretty clothes and her parents who owned a men's clothing store in the city, clearly belonged in the upper strata of society. My father was a labourer and I slung hash in a cheap eating place to other labourers. So I supposed that I was working class. Several rungs below Winnie.

Something in society divided us and without offering us a choice placed us where we were. But I wasn't knowledgeable enough to understand how this had come about. I fretted over this.

When we tired of strolling, and when Winnie grew bored with commenting on the clothes people were wearing, we made our way to ‘The Stump'. This part of the gardens was the domain of spruikers, religious ratbags, political theorists, tin-pot messiahs. It always promised to be entertaining.

Each speaker had his box, usually an old soap box or vegetable crate, and mounted thereon shouted his message to a crowd that drifted from speaker to speaker. The audience contributed to the fun with witty interventions or ribald mimicry. There were no women speakers and it often seemed we were the only two women in the audience.

Winnie looked about with bright eyes. ‘It's such fun.'

The first time we had come here I had asked, ‘Are all these people just allowed to get up and shout whatever they like?'

She had giggled. ‘Usually. But my father says the City Council has had just about enough of free speech and they are thinking of introducing permits. He doesn't mind the religious nuts but he thinks that there are too many political speakers and they may be causing unrest. Anyway, I prefer the religious ones. The political ones are so earnest.'

This Sunday she dragged me over to a small group standing in front of a red-faced bellicose man with sparse hair and a large wart on the end of his nose. His box still bore the label SOUTH AUSTRALIAN TOMATOES.

Winnie whispered to me, ‘Give him a minute, he'll see us and begin to talk about Jezebel. I think he hates women. I suppose plenty have rejected him. It'll be that wart.'

True to her prediction he brayed about the evils of Jezebel, then went on to trumpet the evil of dissenters and non-conformists. In a stentorian voice he condemned our adulterous generation, the evils of false worship, paganism, Marxism, rationalism. In hushed tones he breathed the beauty of redemption, salvation and the flight of the anointed who winged unerringly into a new heaven.

‘What do you think happened to the
old
heaven?' Winnie giggled, and as he turned his wrathful eyes upon her she poked out her tongue at him and, openly laughing, pulled me away.

I went with her, irritated by his puerility. ‘Do they all spout such drivel? Are they of sound mind?'

‘Probably not. But if they weren't so mad we couldn't laugh at him.'

I chewed this one over. The mad, like the poor, are to be pitied my mother had told me but I didn't feel pity for the man with the wart on his nose and he didn't amuse me. He had held the crowd in the palm of his hand. Whether devotees or mockers they were all mesmerised, listening and responding in their own ways. His sort of madness disturbed me. He was a bully and I hated bullies.

I followed Winnie reluctantly. There were several other orators, all perched on their boxes, like birds come to rest. Some had megaphones and they drowned out their neighbours. Away on his own and addressing a small group was a thin man of medium height. He had an English cap on his head and wore a well-used tweed jacket. I recognised him as the reader in my cafe. Winnie was looking elsewhere for entertainment but I gripped her arm. ‘I know him,' I whispered.

Immediately arrested, she peered at him. ‘It's a bit hard to recognise him under that cap. Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where did you meet him?'

‘At the Chew It and Spew It. He's the reader.'

‘Ooooh.' Winnie's attention was now fully focussed. ‘Glasses and all?'

‘Yes. Glasses and all.'

‘Let's go closer. Maybe he'll recognise you. You look much nicer in your Sunday clothes.'

‘I don't want him to do that.'

‘Why?'

‘Don't know. Just don't.'

‘You are a silly old thing.'

I didn't tell her that I was ashamed to work in that cafe; ashamed that I was not better educated; and mortified that he had seen the soup thrown at me. However I was curious and stood at the back of the group with Winnie. Perhaps, I thought, he's so short-sighted he won't recognise me.

He was speaking: ‘All history is the story of class struggle. The economic exploitation and political domination of class by class has always existed. The poor man gets less than his due. The rich man lives by exploiting the poor.

‘The state is an executive committee for managing the affairs of the governing class. The poor are excluded from any active part in the state or the law. We have one law for the rich and quite another for the poor.

‘But, comrades, we are in the last stage of humanity's march towards a classless society. The proletariat will overcome capitalism and bring in a new classless society. You are all part of this historical evolution …'

‘Oh gawd,' Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘And my father thinks he's dangerous.'

She was kind. His audience pilloried him.

‘Get a real job, Professor.'

‘Swallowed a book, have you?'

‘Yeah, the book of the Comical Party. Came in the post from Russia, did it?'

Certainly he had no skills as an orator. He was actually pleading with his audience to listen to him. I didn't want him to be bullying like the warty religious fanatic but his lack of fire annoyed me. ‘Come on, Winnie,' I said, turning aside, ‘let's go.' Others were also drifting away.

‘What a dry old stick,' Winnie said.

I glanced back. Suddenly he jumped down from his box, hurried towards us and snatched my hand. ‘Here,' he shouted, ‘here is a daughter of the working class. Not your idle rich dressed in silks and satins. She has to work every day. Tell them what you think of capitalism,' he insisted, still gripping my hand. ‘Tell them what it's like to be a poor woman in grinding employment.'

The audience had stopped its flight and scarlet with embarrassment I was the centre of all eyes. Furious with him and with sniggering Winnie, the smirks of a watching policeman and the cries of ‘Go on, girlie, get it off your chest,' I allowed myself to be dragged back to the box. There was little I could do since he had such a clutch on my hand.

In desperation to get the whole thing over, I shouted, ‘Capitalism stinks and you should all know it.'

I jumped down and ran to escape the cheers. I scrambled through the growing crowd, ‘Doubtless here to see a woman make a fool of herself,' I fumed.

A burly fellow in a coat without buttons patted me on the back. ‘Good on yer, girlie. I'll tell my missus. We need more like you.'

I ignored him.

Winnie trotted beside me, bleating that I walked too fast.

‘Wear sensible shoes,' I snarled.

I wasn't aware that my tormentor had followed us until I felt the light touch on my shoulder and his voice. ‘Please, Miss Larsen, wait a minute.'

I swung around, glaring at him and he stepped back, perhaps expecting that I would strike him. ‘How dare you?' I flared. ‘Make an idiot of me in front of, in front of …' I stuttered and gestured wildly to include the whole gardens and everyone in it.

He flushed. ‘I didn't m-m-mean …' he stammered. ‘You were so …' he hesitated, ‘thrilling.'

‘Thrilling?' That stopped me. ‘Thrilling?' I choked. Winnie giggled. I pinched her arm and she yelped.

‘What do you mean,
thrilling
?' My indignant voice was an embarrassed squeak.

He was much thinner than I had noticed in the Chew It and Spew It—not aristocratic thin, more starved thin and his sensitive mouth worked nervously.

‘I think she was thrilling, too,' Winnie said coyly and batted her eyelashes at him.

Could she never let another girl have her moment of attention? But to my delight and her chagrin he ignored her.

‘It was thrilling because it was brave,' he said. ‘I always knew you would be brave,' and as I remained silent he added desperately, ‘and full of spirit.'

He blushed again.

Heavens, I thought, he's shy. Instantly I was sorry for him. Shyness I understood. Still resentful, I didn't feel like making the effort to put him at his ease but I could not be so rude as to ignore him. ‘Do you come here often?' I asked stiffly.

‘When I can.'

‘You find it worthwhile when so few listen?'

He looked downcast. ‘We must try. The proletariat need to be educated about the class struggle.'

I laughed. ‘And you think this will convince them?'

My mockery peeved him. He flushed again. It was an irritating habit, particularly in a man.

‘We don't look for immediate results.'

‘No,' I said. ‘That is obvious.'

Winnie and I had begun walking towards the main gardens. He fell into step beside us without being invited. In the Chew It and Spew It he had aroused my curiosity, even earned my gratitude for intervening in the fray over the soup thrower, but now his insistence on dogging us annoyed me. There had been some romantic mystery about him in the cafe; now he was just an ordinary and tactless young man. I chatted to Winnnie and ignored him. She looked embarrassed and kept glancing first at me and then at him. It seemed that he didn't know how to extricate himself and leave. He continued to trot beside us.

Finally, in her pretty engaging way, Winnie asked, ‘We don't know your name.'

‘Nathan,' he said hastily. ‘Nathan Ramsay.'

‘Then, Mr Ramsay, how do you do?' and she held out her hand.

He shook it seriously but in no way showed that he was smitten.

‘We must return home now, Mr Ramsay. Perhaps we will see you here another time.' And she smiled her dismissal.