Hunger Town (22 page)

Miss Marie pinned it on the wall of the art class and every time she looked at it she chuckled. ‘How you've come along, Judith. From the frightened little girl I collected in the passage to this. So much strength and sharp as a tack.'

The constant hovering police presence at the Port was unnerving. Police seemed to be everywhere and under their eyes I had a perpetual feeling of guilt, although I had done nothing. My insecurity led to an exaggerated anxiety that any harmless action might be construed as illegal. But eventually this uncertainty led to reaction and a feeling of defiance. If nothing I did was safe or harmless then they were the enemy and to hell with them.

The events in Victoria Square had cleaved my trust in the police. I felt sorry for our local men who looked uncomfortable and apologetic in their newly oppressive role, but the extra constables brought in from outside the town looked at us with either grim or impersonal dislike. To them we were neither starving nor desperate. We were simply a bloody nuisance, as I heard one remark.

One afternoon as I had walked home from the soup kitchen one of these new constables, holding a copy of the
Beacon
, accosted me. ‘You the girlie who did the ZOO ENTRY cartoon in this paper?'

I froze. ‘Yes.' I was icy.

A half-grin spread across his face. ‘Clever, aren't you?'

I was silent. What was the purpose of his interrogation? Despite my brave front I felt nervous. Under the Crimes Act I supposed that technically my cartoon ‘incited unrest to break the law'. Scabs were now protected by Dog Collar Licences to engage in what was euphemistically named their ‘lawful work'. My father's lawful work no longer existed. Nor did the lawful work of eighty per cent of men at the Port. The law had destroyed our right to lawful work.

As these thoughts jostled each other my anger grew, and replaced my nervousness. If he arrested me, so what? Being in court might supply me with plenty more ammunition for another round of cartoons. That'd show the bastards.

He was waiting.

‘Yes. It is my cartoon. Do you want to make something of it?'

He looked taken aback. ‘No,' he said. ‘I just wondered if you'd like to come to the pictures with me on Saturday night. I'm off that night and don't know any girls in the Port.' He was stammering.

I looked at him in disbelief and he stopped, so red-faced with embarrassment that momentarily I took pity on him. ‘No,' I said, ‘but thank you.'

On the following Friday a small contingent of police arrived at our wharf. We heard the commotion and the noise of lumbering horse-drawn drays and ran out on deck. Men were unloading large wooden barricades. Occasionally, as they heaved and strained and swore, one crashed to the ground. Under police instruction they were sealing off the wharf area.

‘Now it's on,' my father grated. ‘The
Despatch
said this was to be the day the scabs started. They'll work the
Nardana
shifting wool bales.' He snorted. ‘They'll need a few muscles for that. The police expect trouble and trouble they'll get.'

My mother said nothing. She returned to the galley, dished out our porridge and treacle and made a pot of weak tea. ‘Well, they'll have to let me through.' She was determined. ‘I'm needed at the kitchen.'

‘They'll have to let us both through,' my father was fierce. ‘It makes my blood boil. I must be at the meeting at the Federation Hall.'

‘And you, Judith,' my mother was anxious, ‘you won't do anything stupid?'

‘No, of course not. Just some work for school.'

She looked uneasy. ‘Harry won't be coming?' She no longer trusted Harry's assurances that I would be safe with him.

‘I doubt it,' I said. ‘You and Dad can get out but no one will get onto the wharf through those barricades.'

My father looked wolfish. ‘For some of us their barricades will only serve as a goad. Wait and see.'

It was far too interesting to stay in the saloon, so I sat on deck and drew what was happening. I watched my mother and father walk along our wharf and speak with the policeman on duty. My mother half-turned and waved back towards our hulk. He must have been satisfied because he showed them a way through. My father had apparently kept his tongue between his teeth, although I'm sure his silence nearly choked him, because there was no sign of any difficulty.

Now the barricades were in place, a few policemen stood around comfortably chatting. They seemed at ease and occasionally patted one of the wooden stanchions as if commenting placidly to each other on their security. Two of them wandered past our hulk. They saw me and hesitated at the foot of the gangplank, clearly debating whether they would come on board. They decided not to.

Further along the wharf were the huge bales of wool waiting to be loaded on the
Nardana
but abandoned because of the strike. They needed expert handling with baling hooks. I wondered how untrained volunteers could cope with their weight and awkwardness. Shipowners, in their ignorance and arrogance, had the hubris to assume that anyone could do a labourer's job. But I knew that years of experience had honed the skills of men like my father and Jock. It had also honed their muscles. It was just as well the scabs were practising on wool bales. A few baling hooks stuck into wheat bags and there'd be grain from one end of the wharf to the other, a good meal for the rats.

The two policemen strolled back. I wondered whether they had made anything of the wool bales. I supposed that it wasn't up to them to measure the difficulty of the job against the incompetence of the scabs. This time they came up the gangplank.

‘Girlie,' one of them addressed me.

I smiled engagingly. ‘Miss Larsen,' I said. I wanted to say, I don't answer to ‘girlie' any more but thought it was better not to antagonise them.

‘Miss Larsen, we expect trouble here shortly. We can't answer for your safety.'

‘Trouble?' I looked around, pretending confusion. ‘Here? Why here?' I slipped a blank page over my drawings.

‘What are you doing?' one asked.

‘Drawing,' I said.

‘Drawing?'

‘I'm a student at the art school.'

They were doubtful. ‘You're here on your own?'

‘Yes. You saw my mother and father leave. He has business in town and my mother works at the Salvation Army soup kitchen.'

They relaxed. Clearly I was a harmless dabbler in the arts and my mother a respectable religious woman. I could see it in their eyes, a benign acceptance for women they classified as sweet and harmless.

‘Have you friends in town?' They became fatherly.

‘Of course.'

‘Then you ought to go there now. It may get rough here. There was an incident last night. We heard that the anarchists planned to blow up one of the tugs.'

‘My goodness,' I said, suitably thrilled. ‘We heard no explosion. Surely we wouldn't have slept through it.'

‘No, of course not. We stopped it. Left two of our blokes on board for the night.'

We had all heard the rumours. The newspapers had suggested dramatically that such a thing
could
happen, and in the present climate
could
became
will
. There were no anarchists at the Port. The police had wasted their time guarding the tug.

‘Well done,' I lied. ‘Well done.'

They preened themselves a little. ‘So you see, you should leave here. We have no men to spare to guard you.'

I looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose you are afraid there might be another
City of Singapore
.'

They looked blank. ‘I don't think we have any trouble with Chinese,' one said. He looked at his companion with a worried frown. ‘Have you heard of any trouble with the Chinks?'

His companion shook his head.

I tried not to laugh. ‘Well, that's good,' I said. ‘Probably only another rumour.'

They rallied. ‘Well, Miss Larsen, if there are Chinese troublemakers as well as anarchists and union thugs, you must leave.'

I felt my jaw tighten. I didn't like their arrogance and had no intention of leaving. However I put on a distressed, helpless look. ‘I couldn't today.'

‘And why not?'

I pretended embarrassment. ‘I'm not very well, today.' I wished that I could blush on cue, however they caught my drift and did the blushing for me. I murmured, ‘Sometimes it's difficult being a woman. Every …'

They didn't let me finish. ‘Quite so, Miss Larsen. You'll go inside if there's trouble?'

‘Of course. I'll probably feel like it anyway.'

‘We'll keep an eye on the hulk, just in case.'

I beamed. ‘Thank you. That will be such a comfort.'

They edged away.

‘Thank you,' I repeated. ‘I do hope there is not too much trouble.' But they had fled down the gangplank and I was speaking to their backs.

They passed a young man lumbering under the weight of a bag of photographic equipment. He struggled up the gangplank, stepped panting onto the deck, put his bag down and shook my hand. ‘I'm Jim,' he said, ‘press photographer for the
Despatch
. The blokes at the barricade,' he thumbed over his shoulder in their direction, ‘let me through, said you'd probably welcome me aboard. I need a good vantage point. Is it OK?' He looked at me speculatively. His eyes strayed around the deck and settled on my drawings laid out on the small table.

‘Oh,' he said, in surprise, ‘now I get it. You're the Judith who lives on the hulk and draws those marvellous cartoons. Nathan is always singing your praises. He's a friend of yours.'

‘Sort of.'

He ignored my doubt. ‘Great bloke, Nathan. Wonderful at his job. How he reads the lead slugs upside down and back-to-front I'll never know. He amuses us. One day putting together all this crap about the rights of the foreign shipowners and the next lecturing us about the beauties of life in the Soviet Union. He just about runs the
Despatch
you know.

‘Our editor is costive and spends most of his day in the lavatory. He comes out only to check that Nathan hasn't slipped in some Bolshie propaganda.'

He interrupted his prattle to hope that I hadn't been offended. Then he ran on, ‘Nathan says you're a down-to-earth girl.' I listened but my attention was riveted on the wharf.

‘Find any place you like,' I said absently.

He ambled off and selected a spot on the poop deck. ‘Excellent vantage point,' he called. ‘I'll set my tripod up here.'

‘Good,' I called back.

Shortly afterwards I heard the sounds of scuffling, slip-slopping feet as a disorderly group of ill-clad men straggled along the road and onto the wharf. A couple of barricades were moved to let them through and then replaced. Some hesitated and halted before proceeding. I watched them look back nervously as if they were afraid of pursuit, or maybe they were afraid of being caged between the warehouses and the water. They were a weedy bunch. Only a few showed any brawn. I couldn't imagine how they could lift or even manhandle the bales of wool into the cargo nets.

Accompanied by police they were clearly reluctant and jostled each other in a loose pack, like animals afraid of a predator. If I hadn't been so outraged by their preparedness to steal my father's and friend's jobs I might have felt some pity for their obvious fear. They shuffled past the hulk, looking only ahead of them. They didn't even glance at the police escorting them.

I hung over the rails to see all I could. The police were instructing them but it was the blind leading the blind. Two volunteer labourers tried to manoeuvre a bale of wool but lost control of it. It fell to the edge of the wharf, teetered there and then toppled between the ship and the wharf. Several scabs stopped what they were doing, ran to the edge of the wharf and peered over. There was much gesticulating and shouting. The police, like sheep dogs, herded them back to work. I wondered if the bale were in the river or jammed between the wharf and the ship.

Then I heard a new noise, the harsh, inexorable tread of what must have been an army of men bearing down on the wharf. The police also heard. Those at the barricades sprang to attention and spaced themselves along the wooden barriers. Those who had herded the scabs and now supervised their clumsy efforts to load the cargo nets looked back, clearly in two minds as to where they were most needed.

The ranks of marching men from the Port swung into my view. There were hundreds of them. I recognised Jock and Bernie and Frank and Pat in the lead. I was thankful that my father was not with them at the front. I searched amongst the marchers but could not see him. He would be there somewhere. My stomach churned in trepidation.

Now the police raised their batons in readiness and their superior officer bellowed through his megaphone at the marchers, ‘Go back! We don't want any trouble. The volunteers here are legally employed. Stop this march! Go back! Return to your homes!'

But his words might have been confetti wafted and lost on the breeze. With a roar, the marching men swept down upon the barricades, lifted them as if they were match-sticks, heaved them aside and hurled them into the river.

Before this onslaught the police retreated. Those supervising the scabs ran to assist but were thrust aside. They wielded their batons savagely but fruitlessly. There were just not enough of them.

From being a tight phalanx, individuals, armed with iron bars, baling hooks and hunks of wood, broke loose and tore along the wharf. They had the scabs in their sights. Without police protection, some fought to defend themselves. I saw the flash of several knives and blood spurted from the arm of one hefty watersider. With his unharmed arm he lifted the scab and chucked him into the river.

Some scabs tried to pick up the baling hooks they had dropped but as they leaned down they were punched and kicked to the ground. Most fled down the wharf. A couple leapt into the river. Others tried to run up the gangplanks of berthed ships.