Hunger Town (26 page)

I walked home thoughtfully. ‘Is Dr Banks OK?' I asked my mother.

She looked sad. ‘No, Judith, we don't think so. I've been talking to some of the other women. He's an old man and we think his mind is going. Everyone still requests a consultation but no one has faith in him any more.'

I felt bereft. For as long as I could remember Dr Banks had been one of the comforts and supports of the Port. He had been the Medical Officer for years and operated out of our small casualty hospital. Dr Banks pronounced, like God, on the severity of an illness or accident and took the responsibility of sending serious cases to hospital in Adelaide. Well-off or poor took their turn according to the seriousness of their illness. But in addition he was a family adviser, more valuable than the local clergymen, because, as my father had once said, anyone can get a new soul but once the body has gone, pouf, that is the end. The constant changes in the Port, never for the good, were dispiriting, as one community support after another collapsed.

So the word of the meeting in the Federation Hall spread quietly. The police might watch us but they had no power over women gossiping on corners. The soup kitchen became a hive of political activity. At the thought of actually striking back against their suffering many of the women came alive again, their faces animated, their steps firm. An excited fighting spirit replaced the drudgery of endurance. In a small room off the Salvation Army hall they made and painted placards. The more literate wrote protest pamphlets, which they planned to distribute during the march. Harry took them to Nathan who ran off handfuls of copies at the
Port Beacon
hand press.

It was something of a miracle, I thought, that the police had not closed down the
Port Beacon
. It incited revolutionary activity but it was a very small operation and I supposed that the police were fully occupied in protecting the scabs.

Groups of wharf-labourers had regular running battles with the police. At the news that scabs were loading cargo onto a liner at the Outer Harbor, my father marched eight miles there to help confront them. The usual fights occurred; the usual police attacks and baton charges. My father had stopped counting the bruises on his arms, shoulders and back. My mother stoically applied iodine to the new ones and made him a cup of tea. The skirmishes and police beatings were becoming routine. As the scabs, protected by a contingent of police, marched daily to and from the wharves, the Port women and children in pathetic defiance threw stones at them. We no longer thought all of this was unusual. But to have accepted it as a way of life was frightening.

Harry and a flying squad of men from the Unemployed Workers' Union picketed houses where women, unable to pay the rent, were threatened with eviction. Sometimes he said they tried to persuade the bailiffs to leave. ‘But really, Judith,' he was bitter, ‘I don't know why we bother. They're crueller and more mindless than a pack of rodents. They take everything, even the children's toys. However, sometimes we outwit them. As they load furniture into the truck we have blokes stationed there and they simply unload it again. It's strange, you know, nobody says anything. It's all done silently. They pack stuff, we unpack it. A sort of war of attrition.'

He smiled grimly. Not Harry's usual bright cheerful smile. ‘Sometimes we reach an unspoken compromise. We win a bed, a table, a chair, a toy for each of the children, they take the rest. That keeps them happy. When we fight them for everything we know they'll return, like all vermin do.'

Heavy-hearted, I took his arm to comfort him. I had seen children at the soup kitchen clutching a doll or top. Once Herbie had asked, in his kindly way, if he could see a little boy's train. To his dismay the child clutched it, darted behind his mother, and shouted, ‘No, it's mine. You can't have it.' Herbie had stood helplessly, distressed and finally comprehending. He poured the child a particularly large glass of milk.

Quite often we had homeless women and children camped on our deck under canvas awnings my father erected. They were transient, staying for a few days until other family members heard of their plight and either sent for or came for them. On cold nights they moved into the saloon. I offered my cabin but my father refused. ‘No, Judith. Where will you sleep? You are the only one in our family who has work. You must have some private place to do it. We are all dependent on the extra money your cartoons bring in.'

He looked bleak. ‘To throw you out of your cabin, my dear, would be like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.' He patted my arm. Adversity had drawn us closer, tightening our bonds as a family.

But it was hard to concentrate on my work. Babies cried, children shouted at each other, mothers yelled at their children to be quiet or belted them, only increasing the level of noise and screaming. There was constant chaos and confusion. Try as I might I was haunted by the distress outside my closed door. Less nobly, I was exasperated and impatient and discovered to my shame that poverty remote from me was a cause for pity but up close it had all the annoyances of fallible humans.

I confessed to my mother that I felt guilty for not wanting to nurse the babies or cuddle the children and that I was only reluctantly inveigled into playing games. She kissed me on the top of my head and smiled sympathetically. ‘You're a good girl, Judith. You haven't grown up in a big family. Of course you like your privacy. We all do. Just try to get on with your work. We depend on you. I can't offer these families help if you don't sell your cartoons.'

So I stuffed cotton wool in my ears and went to work as best I could but my mother's well-meant assurances had only made me more anxious. Each cartoon I did was an act of faith. What if I failed to have ideas? Or my ideas didn't sell? That others were so dependent on me was a terrible burden.

I was working on a larger cartoon with more complex and subtle figures. I drew a picket line of poverty-stricken men. Breaking through the line was a terrible skeleton riding a horse. I labelled him HUNGER. In pursuit, but halted by the picketers, were three other riders, their faces ravaged and predatory, their horses rearing threateningly in protest at opposition. One bloke on the picket line is saying to his mate, ‘The first one got through but, by God, we'll stop the others.'

I knew it was powerful and well drawn but would it sell? Would readers make the connection with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse? Hopefully the
Workers' Weekly
might take it, even if the
Sun News Pictorial
refused. It had a Biblical theme but I doubted whether the
Despatch
would accept it.

The
Weekly
couldn't pay as much but they were usually a good bet. I had to bring something into the house. But then I worried. The figures of the men were not nobly transfigured by suffering. They weren't striding gloriously into the future as Nathan, and presumably other communists, wanted. They were dogged, only courageous in their determination to keep struggling against almost impossible odds.

Miss Marie consoled me when I complained that I didn't seem to fit the mould and that I was always anxious about whether my work would please. She patted my arm. ‘Never mind, Judith. You are an instinctive radical but an individual thinker.'

I went to the Port Adelaide Institute to read the daily newspapers. We could no longer afford to buy them. There were regular and disturbing articles about events in Europe. The
Workers' Weekly
in particular warned of a resurgent militaristic Germany under the leadership of a fascist named Adolf Hitler. His party, the National Socialists, was gaining in popularity. I recalled Joe Pulham, who had talked to me about Hitler's book.
Mein Kampf
. It was a particularly nasty book, he commented, written by a particularly nasty bloke and if he ever got power the world would be in a fine pickle.

The
Weekly
now quoted Hitler's ominous assertion that all German people of the same blood would be united under the Reich in a Greater Germany and that ‘the tears of war' would ‘produce the daily bread of generations to come'. I didn't know much about Germany and I didn't know what the Reich was but the stories of Hitler's stormtroopers shooting people at political meetings frightened me. It was time, the
Workers' Weekly
trumpeted, that working people all over the world united, took notice, and were fearful. It was a long way away but I was beginning to feel its shadow looming over us.

The Federation Hall was packed. We had arrived early and found our seats, hard-backed wooden chairs near the front. Rows of these chairs filled half the hall. Behind them stretched a space for standing. The seats were quickly taken and dozens of women jammed this space behind. Prams cluttered the central aisle. Women nursed babies or held toddlers between their knees. Children who had been seated on a chair were pushed off for women arriving late. Everyone was crammed in. The hullabaloo was deafening. The noise swept across the room in surges booming off the bare walls and from the wooden floor.

Miss Marie had joined us, thrilled, she said, to at last face the barricades. Her exhilaration was catching. I had never asked her what the Paris barricades had been or why she always dramatised them. But tonight the very sound of them had the inflaming quality of glorious and righteous martyrdom. Somewhere at some time there had been people like us who took a stand against injustice and their passion lived on in Miss Marie's memory and fiery expectations.

Mrs Danley was already seated at a table on the dais. My mother, who had agreed to keep the minutes of the meeting, sat beside her. Like all the other women in the hall they were decked with hats and dressed soberly in the dark clothes they wore for all formal occasions—church on Sundays, dinners with friends, funerals, baptisms.

Only Miss Marie looked a butterfly, scintillating in a room of ravens. Although shorter dresses were now the fashion, she wore a full-length gown of some green shimmering material, a velvet cloak of carmine embossed with emerald flowers, and a matching emerald cloche. She had floated down the aisle on a cloud of Coty's Lily of the Valley perfume when we had made our early entry. Her steps were light and confident, her eyes sparkled over those already seated. Gasps of admiration and wonder followed us, and an occasional childish chirp, ‘Who's that pretty lady?' followed by the sound of a slap and a yelp.

Feeling like a handmaiden trailing the entrance of the Queen of Sheba, I had been hard put not to giggle. If Miss Marie had indeed been born a true Aussie daughter of a South Australian grazier, then some mighty transfiguration had taken place, unless it was simply her delight in theatre.

She whispered in my ear, ‘Judith, I am completely intoxicated. Just look at all these wonderful women who have come out. Aren't they marvellous?' and she beamed about her with such open inviting friendliness that her smiles were returned. ‘I love them all,' she cried, waving her arms expansively to include everyone. On another occasion I might have felt embarrassed to be accompanied by someone who drew so much attention, but tonight was different.

Mrs Danley stood up and rang a small hand bell. The sound of its thin peal hardly made it beyond the first six rows. Women continued to talk. She rang the bell again and failed again. ‘Ladies,' she called. A few in the front rows turned around and called shush to those behind but the noise did not abate. She tried the microphone but no sound came out. Miss Marie frowned. ‘This is too bad,' she said. ‘They are being naughty. They should listen. Now is not the time to chatter.'

She stood up. ‘Ladies,' she called, more loudly than I had thought she could. ‘Ladies, it is time for the meeting to start.'

I don't think it was her voice as much as her regal even garish appearance that stopped everyone. They gaped at her, stunned and silent, and in the temporary lull Mrs Danley called them to order. Miss Marie sat down again and smoothed her dress over her knees. She smiled at me smugly. ‘That's how it's done, Judith.' I laughed. That might be her way of doing it but it was comical to envisage Mrs Danley aping her.

Mrs Danley welcomed everyone. She had fiddled with the microphone speaker and it stuttered to life. She praised us for coming out, said she knew how hard it was for mothers to come to a meeting at night with their children. She asked the children to be quiet for a little while, as quiet as little mice, she said, and put her finger to her lips. It was a gentle approach by a woman who understood other women. There was no grandstanding. I was surprised. I had expected Mrs Danley to be more domineering.

‘We are here,' she told us quietly, ‘to prepare for a march to defend our husbands, sons and brothers who are on strike. We are tired of them coming home bruised and injured from police beatings. We are tired of their despair at not being able to provide a decent living for their wives and children. We are tired of government handouts, charity, ration books and inferior food.'

Murmurs of agreement ran through the crowd. Women nodded, an occasional voice said, ‘It's true,' and someone called, ‘Hear hear!'

Mrs Danley continued, ‘In case you have any doubts about the magnitude of what we are dealing with and its necessity I want you to hear first hand what happened on the wharves when our men came within a whisker of being shot by the police. Judith Larsen saw it all from the hulk. Please, Judith, will you come up onto the platform and tell us what you saw?'

Frozen with horror I stayed fixed to my chair. Surely she wasn't asking me to speak to this huge rally. I was unprepared. How dare she spring this on me? The blood flamed into my cheeks and my hands shook. I looked at my mother but she had her head bent over her book of notes, pretending to write. This was a put-up job by the two of them. I was incensed. It was like a re-run of Nathan in Botanic Park when he had dragged me to his wretched vegetable crate. Only this was much worse. This mattered.