Hunger Town (45 page)

‘No, not really.'

‘But there's a lot of terrible things happening in Spain—strikes and things.'

‘There are plenty of strikes and things here, Winnie, but no one's got killed. I suppose Spain is the same. Now, if Harry were in Manchuria or China I'd be really worried. Japan has taken over Manchuria and a part of China. There's war there.'

‘No one's interested in what Japan does. They're Asians and we're British.' Winnie was dismissive.

‘A lot of people are interested, Winnie. If Japan and Hitler ever get together the world'll be in a nasty pickle, as my old friend Joe Pulham might have said.'

Up until that moment I hadn't thought of a cartoon to comment on Japan's military expansion, although tales of their appalling cruelty had started to creep into the news. Now I thought I might be adventurous and a few ideas began to run through my head. Although, rather than ideas, they were visual images that I played with: the Japanese Emperor sitting astride Cerberus, or the Emperor's face replacing one of Cerberus's, or Hitler and the Emperor shaking hands over the dead body of China. They were all possibilities.

Jock, Frank and Pat also called in regularly, asking if there were jobs to be done about the house: electric bulbs replaced, anything broken in need of repair, gardening—although our pocket-handkerchief backyard required little weeding and I could easily do that. They were so eager that I found myself searching for jobs I might give them to do. If I ate with my parents on the hulk my mother always insisted I stay the night and would not take no for an answer.

All this attention was a comfort but at the same time I felt like a child blocked from any independent move for fear harm might come to me. I became a little dependent on all this cosseting. I was content to indulge myself into believing that it was my due, since Harry had abandoned me.

Miss Marie took me to task. ‘This is no good, Judith. You must face the fact that Harry won't be back for several months, not weeks. Where is your strong character? You have work you could do. You should get on with it.'

And so I shook myself and got down to some drawing. First I considered my cartoons about Manchuria, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito and Hitler, and eventually found one that satisfied me. This time the
Sun News Pictorial
accepted it. They had been running apocryphal articles on Japan's imperialist ambitions and asked me for a series of cartoons on that theme.

Harry's letters, when they began to arrive, were sketchy but I read and reread them avidly. The trip across the Australian Bight had been rough. The ship rolled in the heavy swell. He had been amused by the English sailor's comment that it wasn't really rough at all, just a very
uvvy swoll
. Nathan had been seasick and spent most days lying down in his cabin. (I was delighted to read that Nathan was having a miserable time.)

It had been a relief to dock at Fremantle, Harry's letter continued, a small white, clean port. He had taken a bus into Perth. The road was lined with coral trees. They weren't in flower, which he thought was a pity because in spring they would be a glorious show. The Swan River was attractive with lots of little yachts bobbing around. Nathan had felt better but didn't want to tour. There weren't any comrades in Perth he needed to see.

The Indian Ocean was warmer than the Bight and it had been good to put the grey skies and rain behind them. There were plenty of jolly things to do on the ship and sometimes he joined in the deck games. People sat in deck chairs in the sun or strolled around the deck to take exercise. The meals were quite good.

Nathan had gained his sea legs and was more cheerful. (That was a pity, I thought. I had enjoyed imagining him being laid low.)

Colombo had been a shock. The first thing that struck him was the heat and humidity. The port was dirty and there were hundreds of skinny little men loading cargo onto ships with strange Asiatic names. ‘We have foreign ships coming into Port Adelaide, Jude, but nothing like the size and number of these. They tower over the wharf and their hulls are so rusted that I wonder how they make it across the ocean, particularly in a very
uvvy swoll
.

‘I saw a funny sight. A couple of English people all dressed in white. He even had a white suit and she a sort of floating dress and a big frilly umbrella. They were boarding one of the ships and behind them trailed at least twenty porters all carrying a load of their luggage on their heads. Imagine having enough of this world's goods to need twenty porters to carry it. I wondered if they had left anything at home.'

‘Bombay,' he wrote, ‘had the same atmosphere: terribly hot and humid. Tropical seas have a pearly quality as if the heat has sucked all colour out of the water and left only a thin silver skin. And the smell in Bombay was strange. It reached us even on the ship. I think, maybe, it was the smell of spices. And the porters who rushed on board to pester us for work had a close smoky odour, rather like you get if you sit around a bonfire, but subtly different. They are a poor ragged lot. Desperately and sadly insistent. Of course, we weren't getting off, so they left us to pester other passengers.

‘We haven't had any extra money to take tours, so usually I just wander around the port. Behind the Bombay port there are rows of tumble-down shacks put together with bits of junk. People live in them. And there are beggars—poor creatures with twisted or missing limbs or filthy bandages around their hands or white sightless eyes. We've often talked of poverty, Jude, but I've never seen anything like this.

‘The Suez Canal is amazing. It's just a narrow stretch of water where two ships can pass each other but it's lower than the land on either side, so we could see strings of camels and their riders plodding above us along the sand dunes. Port Said was even dirtier than Bombay and Colombo. Nathan refused to go ashore. He said the filth horrified him and he was afraid of contracting some dreadful disease. I wondered, Jude, whether or not he saw these people as part of the international working class that somehow or other he hoped to unite under communism. I asked him but he just shrugged impatiently. “Of course not, Harry,” he said. “They are far too ignorant to comprehend.” Doesn't their poverty move you? I asked him. And I found his response quite strange. He replied, “Really, Harry, you must grow out of just being an emotional revolutionary. It will get us nowhere. I'm grooming you for better things.”

‘His comments were so unexpected that I laughed at him and he was quite miffed. I didn't pursue the matter but it made me think, Jude. I wondered where these desperate people might fit in under communism and whether they would be better off than they are under capitalism. And there are so many of them to consider. And I suppose I only see a few.

‘I know it sounds naïve but I have never before realised how many people there are in the world.'

Always his letters ended with how much he loved and missed me and although he found travelling stimulated his thoughts he would prefer to be home. Obviously, Nathan wasn't much of a travelling companion and simply did on the ship what he did at home: immersed himself in a book of communist theory.

But Harry was different. The personal miseries of the poor had always affected him. From the time he had tried to stop evictions his commitment to communism was really a search to find a system that relieved his sense of impotence at not being able to help enough. When, after the hunger march, I had wept that it was awful to be always defeated, he had said, yes, it was, and that was why we needed to find a political way to help people to live decently. ‘I'll never forget, Jude, the despair of those evicted women, weeping while their few possessions were taken away. It was the anguish of those who have learned to be content with little and then lose even that.'

Dear, sweet Harry, who had a heart full of feeling. I should have been more understanding and probably I might have been if Nathan hadn't always been a presence in our lives, pushing, pushing, a ‘compelling bloke' as Harry had said. But to me, Nathan was too damned compelling, too damned dictatorial.

His next letter told me he had arrived in England. The ship docked at Southampton and they caught the train to London. There was a thick yellow fog and the air was foul with the acrid smell of coal. Nathan told him that the English kept warm by burning coal, hence the smoke and smell of the terrible fog.

‘It's nothing like a sea fog, Jude, which is beautiful and strangely mysterious. This is nasty and eerie because disembodied footsteps follow and pass you and people are just like ghosts. You see them suddenly and then they vanish.

‘We are staying in a cheap hotel near Hyde Park. Our room is on the third floor. It's cavernous and cold and the bathroom is one floor below. It is a bathroom and I emphasise the bath, Jude. It is a truly noble structure and stands on a plinth in the middle of the floor. We pay a shilling to fill it with lukewarm water and to get light in our room we have to put a shilling in a meter. Everything seems chill and dank. Even my clothes feel damp all the time. I can't imagine why so many Australians talk of the glories of “home”, meaning England. Obviously they haven't stayed in this pub.

‘Nathan had a meeting with Harry Pollit, the head honcho of the communists here. He was overcome by the importance of the occasion and bitterly disappointed in me because I had a stomach upset and couldn't get out of bed for two days. However, although he was very impressed with Harry Pollit, he was a little put out to be joked at for being a colonial communist. They treated him very well but he wasn't certain whether he was being patronised for being Australian or treated as a celebrity for being unusual. Poor Nathan. He finds it so hard sometimes to get a grasp on what is going on in a conversation.

‘I love you, Jude, and miss our cheerful little bathroom, the chip heater and someone to share a bath with me.'

In his letters I heard more about Harry's reactions to Nathan than he had ever before expressed to me but I supposed that this was the first time he had an opportunity to closely observe him. Or maybe the rarefied atmosphere of travel and change brought him new perspectives. Or maybe he could speak to me in a letter while I wasn't present to put a damper on his opinions.

I had come to see that little by little Harry had avoided arguments with me. Horrified to think such a thing, I asked my mother, ‘Is he afraid of me?'

‘No, no,' she consoled, patting me on the arm. ‘It's just that you're so strong- willed. But he's always known that.'

She hadn't really answered me. Did my strong will overwhelm Harry? And if it were so, what the hell could I do about it? I couldn't become without will.

Winnie was no use either. She just giggled. ‘He needs someone to boss him around. I've always done it.'

‘But I've noticed, Winnie, that it doesn't always work when you do it.'

‘Well, I don't expect it to.'

‘And what if I do it?'

‘Oh, that's different,' she said airily.

Miss Marie was similarly useless. ‘Of course you're strong-willed, Judith. How else could you become such a fine cartoonist?'

‘But with Harry? Isn't that different?'

‘Well, yes. But we can't change ourselves, Judith, to make others comfortable. Has Harry told you he doesn't like your strong will?'

‘Really, Marie,' I grimaced, ‘he's hardly likely to do that.' And I mimicked,
‘
“Jude, I really hate your strong will. I think you ought to change.
”
'

She laughed. ‘Yes, Judith, it's as silly as that. Now what new cartoons have you in mind? I think something about Spain should be next on the menu. Spain is like a lady in waiting. For Hitler to gobble her up. The left appear to be in disarray, all fighting amongst themselves. Since the communists expelled the anarchists from their ranks I think the anarchists have all congregated in Spain and are setting a fine example to the world on how to run a libertarian community without the support of a big brother. What a delightful headache for the comrades.

‘
Spearhead
could do with a little more help from you, Judith.'

‘Harry wouldn't like it. It looks like doing something behind his back.'

She raised her eyebrows. ‘He isn't here, Judith.'

‘No,' I grinned. ‘He isn't, is he? Nor is Nathan. And these days Jock has a pretty breezy attitude about it all. Sometimes he swears about the anarchists but he was raised in the slums of Glasgow. Marvellous leveller in political thinking, real poverty.'

‘Yes. And cuts through the hocus-pocus of men like Nathan.'

We agreed.

‘And Frank,' I added, ‘he's first and foremost Irish. I don't think Nathan has ever caught on that he's less interested in the views of the comrades on international brotherhood than in Ireland being for the Irish.'

So I worked at a couple of cartoons for
Spearhead
. I drew a big Stalin with exuberant moustache in his full uniform, a huge star on his chest. Stepping out of his plane, he looks down on a crowd of anarchist workmen in overalls, and says to them:
This is Spain. We don't want any workers' state here.

Spearhead
loved it and rejoiced, as they put it, in reclaiming me. I waited for the barrage of abuse from the comrades but they said nothing. Jock rolled his eyes at me and snorted, ‘Bloody anarchists. Part-time revolutionaries. Want to begin the revolution at eight o'clock in the morning and knock off at five o'clock.' Frank smirked but added, ‘Darlin', when the cat's away the mice come out to play.'

I hoped he meant Nathan, not Harry. Whatever either of them meant, I was both amused and irritated. I would have composed it, I told myself, whether or not Nathan and Harry were away. I had supplied
Spearhead
with cartoons before this. If I were going to be a gadfly in my work I'd better have no favourites and I had come to wonder whether Stalin were a larger edition of Nathan—another compelling sort of bloke.