Hunger Town (43 page)

The Communist Party ran large public meetings at the Port and we attended even larger gatherings in Adelaide. Speakers came from Melbourne and as far away as Sydney. They accused the Labor Party of shilly-shallying: it had no answers to fascism, Nazism, poverty or unemployment. It was just a lackey of capitalism. Communism had the answer. It alone stood strongly united. It alone could meet the challenge of fascism and Nazism.

Party membership grew by leaps and bounds and Harry was even busier. He became organiser of our local branch. The international threat of a resurgent Germany led by a ruthless fascist united members of the Communist Party and buried all previous personal differences.

They still argued, Harry told me, about how to persuade people, how to present their policies, but they were as one in agreeing what the policies should be. Nathan, with his wisdom and impressive knowledge of communist theory, was an inspiration. Jock's practical experiences amongst the workers of Glasgow were invaluable. Everyone, Harry said, was now steadfast.

We were all caught up in the emotional turmoil. Stories emerged of Jewish people fleeing Germany with terrible tales of persecution. If we did nothing, a second world war would be the inevitable outcome of our failure.

The world was now divided into two camps, Harry said, fascism versus communism, and we must all choose which side we were to fight on. Spain, he said, had led the way. There the people had thrown down the gauntlet to their capitalist oppressors and formed the second Republic—in contrast to Austria where Englebert Dolfuss, the dictator, had crushed the workers. The Spanish Republic stood firm as an inspired front of the left.

Harry was on fire with a messianic belief and hope. But I still read copies of
Spearhead
and knew that the anarchists in Spain were organising revolts against the mine owners and calling for a general strike on behalf of striking railway workers. Their opposition to the Republic resulted in terrible reprisals: thousands of unionists were arrested and those peasants with the support of the anarchists who tried to seize land from the land-holders and establish an egalitarian community were shot. Who were the top dogs in the Republic, I wondered. Were they like Nathan at the meeting in Mildura, set on imposing from the top something the people didn't want? Who was being sacrificed in the name of unity, and what principles?

But Harry continued to view the Republic with stars in his eyes. Only once I dared comment that maybe it wasn't all it was cooked up to be. He looked bemused. ‘What are you talking about, Jude?'

‘
Spearhead
,' I said.

He scoffed. ‘What would they know? A tin-pot little paper in Australia hundreds of miles from Europe? Pure propaganda.'

‘No, Harry,' I said quietly. ‘I don't think so.'

He kissed me cheerfully before dashing off. ‘Well, that's OK, so long as you don't draw any cartoons about anarchists being all right. We can do without them splitting the ranks.' I sighed and kissed him back.

He left the house and I enjoyed the peace to think my own thoughts. These days it was always full of his exuberant and loud excitement. For like all the other comrades he fed his anger on daily stories of disaster as evidence that the communists must triumph.

So it was an appalling shock to him when later that year the Spanish Republic collapsed and in the following election a right-wing government took control. He was disbelieving. ‘It can't be so, Jude. How could it happen? It's those bastards of anarchists. They've betrayed us. They've messed it all up.'

‘Is that what the comrades say?' I asked.

For the first time ever he snarled at me. ‘Don't call them comrades in that mocking way. They're my friends and they're good communists working bloody hard. Sometimes I could do without your smug I'm-the-great-cartoonist style.'

Horrified, I stared at him. This was a nasty Harry I had never known. The conflicts in Europe between people we had never met over issues remote from us were not our personal business. Harry's fanatical beliefs were unreal. To thrust those fantasies in my face with such bitterness was madness.

I was hurt. Of course, I was hurt. But more than hurt I was shocked and afraid. Something dark had opened up between us. Had he for years concealed some resentment of my work? Did my success threaten him? Did he need to believe utterly in a cause? Did he need to dream that it would succeed and he bask in its glory? Had he transferred his disappointment at never being a great musician to a hope of finding ultimate satisfaction in the Communist Party? Had playing Bach on the great organ seemed an impossible achievement, while a significant role in the Communist Party was an easier, more attainable one?

These thoughts jostled together in my mind as I silently looked at him. Eventually he flushed and hung his head.

‘Do you really feel that way about me and my work, Harry?'

‘No,' he mumbled, ‘of course not.'

‘Look at me, Harry.'

But he refused.

‘I'm sorry,' I said humbly. ‘I didn't know you felt like that. I meant nothing by calling them comrades. We've often done so before between ourselves.'

‘Yes,' he mumbled again. ‘I know. I'm sorry, too. It was all such a shock, the collapse of the Republic. We had dreams and expectations. It's such a grievous disappointment.'

I knew better than to rub salt into the wound by pointing out that what happened in Spain really had nothing to do with us, for clearly it meant something personal to Harry.

But when he had gone my earlier instinct for reconciliation turned to resentment. I flung the cartoon I had been working on into the press, tossed my pen on the table, grabbed my coat and slammed out of the house. I'd go to the hulk and tell my mother and father and Dad could spit over the side of the boat when I told him how fed up I was with communist claptrap. And what's more, in future, Harry could take his fair share of bringing money into our home. He could start thinking of me slaving over each bloody cartoon while he brought in a pittance for being an organiser for the Communist Party.

He had even given up playing his piano at the dance hall and we had to do without the small amount he had earned from that. Well, he could get that job back again.

By the time I reached the hulk I was in such a stinking mood that I spilled out all my resentment. My mother clucked sympathetically but told me not to take it to heart—Harry was obviously over-tired and not himself. I snorted at this.

Harry was a warm-hearted boy, she said. (To them Harry was always a boy.) But he became easily involved. His sweetness made him naturally impressionable. She was sure that when he returned home he would be full of repentance for being so rude to me.

Only partially mollified, I continued to grump.

‘Let him alone, Judith,' my father advised. ‘He's suffering from hot-house fever. A too-concentrated dose of the Communist Party and their angst. Of course, his conscience is over-loaded, too. Too much belief that you are right and that the responsibilities of the world rest on your shoulders alone gives you massive indigestion, confusion and bad temper.

‘He'll come around. Even Harry will see that eventually too much conscience makes you self-opinionated. And that's the comrades all over. A surfeit of conscience is their specialty. No one else has one, unless they believe as the comrades do. He's a good boy and not nearly as stupid as he appears to be at the minute. Give him a little time to come around.

‘And now, how about using that spare fishing rod of mine and we'll see if we can catch your supper?'

I went home with a good-sized flathead wrapped in a wet cloth and a determination to ignore Harry's words.

As my mother had predicted, he came home full of misery and repentance and with a large bunch of flowers. I kissed him warmly and was pleased to see his mood lighten. That night we didn't say one word to each other about the problems of the world. There were happier things we could do.

But, despite the sweetness of our reconciliation, the bitterness in Harry's words rankled. I dwelled on them and wrestled with how much I was to blame. I felt guilty for feeling resentful about how little money Harry earned. My thoughts should never have turned in that direction. They were mean thoughts.

I recalled Winnie warning me in her practical manner that Harry was ‘not much of a catch' and I'd better get used to the idea of being the family provider. I had dismissed her comment angrily. ‘I'm not marrying Harry to provide for me. I can do that myself.'

And she had annoyed me with her look of pity. Had I really so changed that I could now complain about him in just that way to my parents? I felt ashamed. And yet, as I tried to honestly confront my faults, I didn't think it was money that separated us. Harry could simply not understand why I wouldn't join the Communist Party and support it as whole-heartedly as he did.

‘I can't fathom you, Jude,' he said. ‘You produce such biting political cartoons and publish them quite happily in the
Workers' Weekly
. Our paper. But you won't join us—although everyone in the Party wants you.'

I squirmed at the ‘our' and ‘us' but replied equitably, ‘I don't think I could belong to anything that imprisons my ideas, Harry. It would be like putting fetters on myself.'

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘We don't do that, Jude. You are very contradictory. One minute you seem to believe one thing, the next you have other ideas.'

‘No,' I said, ‘I'm not contradictory at all.' And at his incomprehension I was tart. ‘I can't fathom why you must have all your ideas presented to you ready made.'

Suddenly he grinned. ‘Tit for tat. But I do not. I agree with the opinions I agree with and disagree with the ones I disagree with. But at the minute, with all this business in Germany, what the communists are saying makes sense and I see no point in arguing. If you won't join us, maybe we could enlist your help?'

His face was solemn but his eyes laughed.

I responded cautiously, ‘OK, but it depends.'

He pretended to give the matter much thought and I didn't know whether or not it was a joke.

‘What we need, Jude, is a dirty-big cartoon glorifying Comrade Stalin. Perhaps you could do a very big man with a large star on his chest confronting Hitler, who has shrivelled to a tiny creature.'

I looked at him uncertainly. Did he really mean it? Previously we had argued about Comrade Stalin. ‘He's a dictator,' I had said. ‘He has too much power for one man.'

And Harry had returned, ‘A great communist leader.'

But I hadn't been certain whether there was a sardonic inflection in his tone. Was he in earnest now or merely teasing me?

At my confusion he shouted with laughter and hugged me. ‘Oh, your face, darling. You'd think I'd offered you a poisoned chalice.'

‘Oh, you, Harry,' I said. ‘For a minute I wondered if you had.'

He stopped laughing, suddenly. ‘Did you really?' And I knew that once again I had overstepped the mark.

‘I love you, Jude,' he said, ‘and would never, never, never do anything to harm you.'

Of course I hadn't meant to hurt him. It had only been a silly joke. Why did our political sparring always take a personal tone? It seemed that what we really argued about was ourselves. The Communist Party might give Harry his sense of worth and importance, but it was the bane of my life.

Miss Marie visited and teased him without mercy about the Communist Party. She even dared to call it the Comical Party. She advised him, quite outrageously, to give up the communists and join the anarchists, who were, on the whole, a happier bunch, more relaxed, friendlier, and a damn sight more egalitarian. They did not regard themselves as the saviours of the world but were content to be the labourers in the fields, humble still in their role as human beings.

And he took it all from her without ire and joked at her in return. And during her visits he played his favourite tunes on the piano and they sang together cheerfully and I felt a sad outsider. Why couldn't I bring him such joy? Why couldn't I find again the old Harry, the merry young man I had married?

Miss Marie felt my unhappiness and when we were alone she became serious. ‘It's harder, Judith, when two people are very close. They fear anything that might separate them and fear is like a big snake around their necks, squeezing the joy out of them.'

‘So,' I said testily, ‘we are afraid because we are separating from each other? But it's not the separation we need to be afraid of but the fear of it. That doesn't make any sense, Marie.'

She sighed. ‘I suppose not,
ma pauvre
.'

‘We can't even talk to each other,' I burst out. ‘Any serious conversation always ends in accusations. I watch every word, guard my every expression in case I hurt him and I think he does the same to me. So we only speak of the superficial and even that's not always safe. It's driving me crazy. Perhaps I ought to join the Communist Party. Would it help? Would he be happy? I've reached the point of not caring one way or the other. I can accept Communist Party philosophy and put up with all the rhetoric that goes with it. After all, I like quite a few of the members—Jock, Pat, Frank—and I can tolerate Nathan. They'd welcome me with open arms.'

‘Of course,' she said. ‘Judith Larsen, cartoonist par excellence, even of international fame now the London
Daily Herald
features your work.'

‘Well?' I asked. I was impatient. My international reputation couldn't have seemed more remote to me. My immediate concern was Harry. ‘Well, should I join? What do you think?'

She studied her nails, which were always finely filed and polished to a pearly sheen. ‘I think, Judith,' she looked up at me searchingly, ‘I think you have to be honest and Harry can't expect you to be otherwise. He, too, has to be honest, and realise that insidiously he is blackmailing you and causing you much anguish. He is a very naughty boy to put the Communist Party before you. Ah, the stupidity of converts whose beliefs are frequently as narrow as a coffin. Which, of course, eventually buries them.'