Hunger Town (7 page)

He was quiet and put his hand over his mouth to suppress his cough. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘of course you want a future. You're young and it's your right. If that isn't your right, then why did we get into the goddamn awful war? What a waste.'

I had never heard Joe swear before, and looked at him, startled.

‘Yes, Nearly-Twelve,' he repeated, ‘a goddamn awful war, an unnecessary one, and an unproductive one. The only people who win in a war are the rich ones.'

This time his spasm of coughing racked his whole body. Over the years he had grown thinner, his skin had now a grey hue and his hair, once thick and white, fell in cotton-wool wisps about his ears.

‘You're not well, Joe.' I was ashamed of my concentration on myself. He repeated his words from years earlier, ‘You could say that, Nearly-Twelve. You could say that. But what is that folder you have on your lap? Have you brought me something interesting?'

I blushed. ‘It's nothing, Joe.' He was clearly very ill and I shouldn't be bothering him.

‘Well,' he said, ‘I'd like to see what nothing is.'

Shyly I took out my drawings and put them in front of him. He studied them thoughtfully, one by one, occasionally pushing his glasses up on his nose. Then when he had looked at them all he started again. Sometimes he turned one so that the poor light fell more strongly on it and he held it closer to his face peering at it. I noticed large brown spots on the back of his hands. Finally he looked up at me.

‘Well,' he said, ‘well, well, well. Who would have thought? How long have you been doing this, Nearly-Twelve?'

‘Since I first came to the Club.'

His intensity puzzled me, as he kept returning to examine the drawings.

‘Well,' he said again, ‘well, well, well. You know, Nearly-Twelve, when I worked as a compositor on the
Argus
we printed sketches and cartoons of everyday life, but few were as good as these. Now I could readily find a caption for this fool boy swinging on the belt, but equally important is your background sketch of the foundry. Our Australia is entering the urban and industrial phase of its life and artists will begin to reflect this world. There were artists in the last century who had to find their Australian-ness in the landscape. Recently some fools told us that our Australian-ness has been born of going to war and that's nonsense. Now in peacetime many of us are becoming city people. Artists will reflect that.'

Overwhelmed by his burst of knowledge, I protested, ‘But, Joe, I'm not an artist.'

He grinned. ‘Maybe you're not but maybe you are. These are very good. Could you leave the belt-swinger with me? And this one of fuelling the furnace? I have a mate on the
Workers' Weekly
. He may be able to do something with them.'

‘Do what, Joe?'

‘Leave it with me, Nearly-Twelve. Leave it with me. And you must keep on doing these. They're very good.'

He took down a book from the shelves and handed it to me. ‘Have a look at these. They are drawings by Goya, a Spanish painter.'

‘I saw them before, Joe. They're ugly and queer.' I shuddered.

‘Yes, very ugly at times. Quite horrible. But they say something. Have another look. You may find them stimulating. We don't learn just from pleasant things. Have a think about the way he draws.'

Joe opened a door for me, a small crack that let in just a smidgeon of light. A week later it was extinguished, because Joe died suddenly.

I continued to waitress at the Chew It and Spew It, but now the regulars called me Judith and occasionally enquired about my health. It was as if they expected the soup-throwing incident to have permanently scarred me and they drew me comfortingly into their own circle of victimisation. They were warm in a rough way. I responded with a smile or a laugh and their company made my work easier and more pleasant. But Nathan, the reader, didn't come for his bun and tea any more.

In the occasional spare moment when I wasn't serving or cleaning I sat down with my sketchpad and, remembering Joe's encouragement, drew from memory the faces I had seen that day.

I had wanted to attend Joe's funeral but both my parents were against it. ‘Only men will be there,' they said. ‘It's no place for a girl.'

A month after Joe's death Winnie and Harry came to afternoon tea. My mother was delighted that Winnie and I were friends. Winnie's pretty ways comforted her with a dream that I might learn to be more feminine. In her realistic moments she doubted this possibility, even blaming herself for this not happening. I jokingly teased her, ‘What sort of imbecile would you want me to be? A weepy?' I grinned and put my arm about her and she laughed with me.

As Winnie teetered up the gangplank my father looked askance. She looked gorgeous in a tangerine dress and a wide-brimmed cream hat. Harry offered his hand to help her balance and she giggled, first at him and then appraisingly at my father. He was still a handsome Nordic man with eyes the sapphire blue of ice caves and as she fluttered her absurdly long eyelashes at him his skin flushed a dark mahogany.

Later he subjected us to his outrage. ‘She tried to flirt with me, at my age. Her no older than Judith. The little minx. I don't know what young people are coming to these days. Absolutely no respect.'

His strictures amused my mother. ‘You want her to regard you as an old man, Niels?'

‘No, no, of course not.' And again he blushed like a boy. ‘Just some respect,' he mumbled, discomforted by her amusement.

But she was having fun. ‘I'm sure next time she'll find lots of respect for you, Niels, when she notices all those grey hairs.' She put out her hand and ruffled searchingly in his mane of blond hair. ‘Here's one,' she laughed, plucking it out.

He shrugged her off. ‘I haven't any grey hairs. My hair's always been blond. It's the sun here. It bleaches everything. I get tired of the endless bloody sun. I could do with a northern winter and the cleanness of cold snow.'

‘The coldness of cold snow you mean,' she sighed. ‘People go crazy in places where the sun shines feebly for only half a year. What are you talking about?—all that nostalgia nonsense.' Then she sighed again as she always did when my father dug up memories of his youth.

However, when Winnie had stepped on to the deck he had been full of gallantry and courtesy like a king receiving some foreign empress to his court, I thought, with a mixture of jealousy and resentment.

‘Just in case,' he said, ‘you stumble over a rope. Ships are unpredictable places, but then they are adventurers on the high seas and they ride the wild winds.'

She opened her eyes wide at this burst of poetic language that amazed me.

She thanked him sweetly and clung to the support of his arm a fraction too long. My mother appeared, broke the spell, and took charge.

He was less gallant and more wary with Harry. I could see he was struggling to categorise him. Harry did not look the typical foundry worker. His body carried little heavy muscle, yet he was not puny. An athlete, I thought. Harry is a runner, he has the lithe fluid movements of a greyhound or a dancer. Brawn wouldn't get Harry out of trouble but speed and flexibility might.

Harry held out his hand to my father with a frank engaging smile. ‘How do you do, sir?'

My mother slipped her hand over her mouth to hide a smile and my father, startled, had a moment of suspicion, but Harry's openness convinced him that no mockery was intended. Relieved, he shook Harry's hand, and soon they were deep in conversation about the foundry.

Mostly occupied by Winnie's chatter, but deeply curious, I garnered only slivers of their conversation. My father mentioned the machines and Harry nodded. In fact, he nodded a lot, as my father did most of the talking.

‘Poorly paid … no compensation.' Harry looked sober.

‘Came to the foundry begging for help?'

They were speaking about the mother of the boy who had been killed. Harry's voice was quiet: ‘Four other children.'

‘Bloody disgrace.' My father's voice was loud and strident, as it always was when he was angry. ‘Bosses for you. Did she get anything?'

Harry shook his head. ‘The boss reminded her she was only entitled to the award.'

My father snarled. ‘The award. A starvation award. You watch yourself in that place, Harry.' He placed a protective hand on Harry's shoulder. ‘You watch yourself, my boy.'

In the space of a few moments Harry had wheedled himself into my father's affection. Yet I had seen other instances of my father's kindness to young workers.

‘We took up a collection for her,' Harry said, ‘me and the other boys. It's too late to bury him but it might help.'

My father snorted: ‘And those Holier-Than-Thous doubtless prayed over him and swindled his mother that there would be joy for him in the After Life. Religion,' he snorted again and spat into the sea, as if relieving himself of a nasty taste. ‘A big lie to stop the working man from complaining.

‘Complaining!' he was caustic. ‘That's their word for what we want. We don't complain, we fight the bastards. Has anyone told you about the waterside strike in Perth in 1919? A wake-up call to us all. The ship-owners tried to bring in scab labour to work the
Dimboola
. The lumpers showed them. They threw the scabs into the Swan River. Mounted police charged the protesting women with bayonets. Let them try their tricks here. Our river is as good as the Swan. We'll show them.'

My mother interrupted them to call them to afternoon tea but my father continued to dominate the conversation until she put a hand on his arm. ‘Give the boy a break, Niels. I'm sure he'll come again and there'll be time to tell him more of your stories.'

‘Yes, yes, of course. I didn't mean to bore you, Harry. But you youngsters need to know what is what. Get the right ideas now and you won't go wrong in the future.' He laughed a little self-consciously and in a rare moment I saw him not as a virile young man enduring the hardships of Iceland and windjammers but as a man approaching middle age. He had married late and was now in his late forties. Physical work had taken its toll and his arms had begun to develop an aged skinniness.The backs of his hands, once fair-skinned, had sunspots. He wanted to impress and I was grateful to Harry for his patience.

Harry assured him that he wouldn't go wrong in the future. Then, turning to me, said, ‘By the way, Judith, your friend Nathan often comes around at the foundry.'

‘He's not my friend, Harry.'

Winnie poked me in the ribs, rolled her eyes at my mother, and shook her head, denying my denial.

‘Stop it, Winnie,' I said, ‘my mother will think …'

‘And what should I think?' My mother was quick.

‘Resigned,' I said. ‘I met him at the Chew It and Spew It. I told you about the soup incident.'

‘Oh, that.' She dismissed any suspicion she might have had and I threw a warning look at Winnie, who grinned naughtily at me and said, ‘Her hero, Mrs Larsen.'

I was growing tired of Winnie aligning herself with others to embarrass me but I was curious and asked Harry, ‘Why does Nathan come around the foundry?'

‘He talks to us when he can and gives us leaflets on workers' rights and about the Free Speech meetings. The boss always shouts that he'll have him for trespass but can't because he joins us when we have a smoke-o and that's usually off the premises.'

My father looked thoughtful. ‘This Nathan's a smallish chap with a quiet manner and spectacles? A communist, I think. They're not a bad lot. Just too fixed in their ideas.'

‘And that coming from you, Niels?' My mother laughed.

‘Well,' he said, caught off-guard, ‘well, there are lots of groups in the labour movement.'

‘All with fixed ideas.' She was caustic. ‘All disagreeing with each other.'

She got up and cleared the table. ‘Now, for heaven's sake, let's have a rest from politics.

‘We have a piano, Harry. Perhaps you'd like to give us a tune.'

We had been sitting in the galley but now my mother led the way into a larger cabin converted to a sort of sitting room. Harry approached the piano as if it were some religious icon. His face glowed. He ran his fingers lightly and lovingly over the woodwork. ‘May I?' he asked, but before anyone could reply he lifted the lid and struck a few notes. ‘It's well tuned,' he said, and, comfortably confident, pulled out the piano stool and sat down.

My mother hovered beside him. ‘Do you need some music?'

‘Can't read it,' he laughed. ‘Never learned. But here is,' and he launched into ‘If you knew Susie like I know Susie, Oh, oh, oh what a girl'.

Winnie had said that he had rhythm in his bones and she was right. In the zest and joy of his playing I felt the real Harry was revealed and wondered if he was the same man who had listened so earnestly to my father. Now he was playing ‘When my Sugar walks down the street' and this morphed into ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina'. Finally he finished with a soulful rendition of ‘We'll build a dear little, cute little love nest'.

‘Oh, Harry, that was beautiful,' my mother breathed. ‘You and the piano talk to each other.'

‘Yes,' my father grunted, ‘very nice, most enjoyable.'

But now Harry had eyes only for my mother and they smiled at each other like two pieces of chocolate that melt together. My father was forgotten. I pitied him. With Harry my father's strident tones had quietened. He had been gentle, almost tender. I had watched this transformation puzzled and a little suspicious. Even at seventeen I sensed an emotional simplicity about my father that left him vulnerable to the more sophisticated.

Harry was a natural sophisticate. A charmer. Maybe a manipulator. Did he genuinely respect my father or was it only a game, played by someone who thrived on being liked?

Work continued at the Chew It and Spew It from eight in the morning until six at night. When I wasn't waitressing I cut up vegetables, washed dishes, mopped floors, washed cleaning cloths and tea towels. I complained to my father that I hadn't been hired for this extra work and ought to be paid for it.