by Wendy Scarfe
‘They’ve arrested him.’
‘Arrested him?’ She stared at me blankly. ‘What for?’
‘I don’t know.’
She fixed her eyes on Nathan, who was standing hesitantly behind me. Pat had retreated into the deck shadows where he couldn’t be seen.
‘And this is all your fault?’ she rounded on Nathan. ‘My daughter looking as if she has been dragged through a garden hedge, Harry half-dead, my husband arrested. This is all your fault.’ Her voice crescendoed until she was shouting. ‘Look what you have done. You with your stupid Bolshie ideas.’
‘No, Mum,’ I protested, ‘no, it wasn’t Nathan’s fault. It was the police. Please don’t shout. There’s been so much shouting tonight.’ My voice shook. ‘I don’t want to listen to any more shouting.’
She took a deep gasping breath.
‘And Harry?’ I pleaded. ‘How is Harry?’
Now angry at me for defending Nathan, she swept back to Harry’s side dragging me with her. ‘See for yourself, my girl.’
Harry looked terrible. Both his eyes were shut and the swelling round them was red and angry. Purple and black bruises had erupted under the skin of his cheeks, neck and arms. His lips were broken and bleeding. His hair was matted with streaks of dried blood my mother had failed to wash away. He didn’t move.
‘Harry,’ I whispered, cradling his hand. My shock was too great, even for tears. I turned to Dr Banks, mute with fear. He patted my shoulder. ‘He’ll live. It looks worse than it is. No structural damage. He’s lucky. Young people are tough.’
No, I thought resentfully, no they aren’t. The cemetery is full of the graves of children not tough enough to withstand diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, even typhoid. Whole families of children gone in one month. Doctors weren’t always right.
‘They bashed him,’ I said angrily. ‘They didn’t need to.’
His mouth tightened. ‘No, but I daresay I’ll also find a few young policemen waiting for my attentions in the hospital.’
‘We weren’t armed with batons,’ I said wearily. ‘They had the advantage.’
Then I recalled seeing the flash of Bernie-Benito’s knife. What if he had used it? The thought of what might have eventuated filled me with terror. There was nothing in my life that had prepared me for such visceral conflict.
Dr Banks insisted on having a look at me. Regardless of my protests he felt the back of my head, pursing his mouth when I winced. ‘You’ve got a good-sized abrasion there. Your mother will clean it.’
He shone a bright light in my eyes, twisted my neck this way and that, ran his fingers down my spine, tapped my knee, examined the scratches on my leg and asked what I had been doing with myself. Had I, too, been part of the affray?
I lied that I had run and fallen, skidded on a small stone, and that’s when I had lost Harry. From the corner of my eye I saw Frank and Bernie lower their eyes to examine their hands. They had rested them on their knees and did not move or look up.
Dr Banks grunted disbelievingly. He left some prescriptions for Harry, some pain killers and a sedative to help him sleep. He said he would look in again tomorrow, put his medical equipment back in his bag and snapped it shut.
My mother accompanied him out of the saloon. Nathan moved out of the doorway to let them pass. I had forgotten that for all this time he had hovered irresolutely in the doorway. As in the gardens when he trotted after Winnie and me, he seemed unable to decide when it was time to leave. As Dr Banks passed Nathan I heard him say to my mother, ‘I don’t care much for the company she keeps.’
I got up, gently replaced Harry’s hand on the couch and turned to Nathan. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Everyone has been very rude to you and Pat. Please excuse us. I think it’s the result of shock. My mother is so angry that she has to blame someone.’
I put out a tentative hand and touched his sleeve. ‘Thank you for finding me and thank Pat. Later, perhaps, we’ll be more like ourselves again.’
He nodded, his eyes luminous behind his thick spectacles. I remembered how, when he had flashed his torch on me, I had seen pinpoints of light dancing in his glasses. How odd I had thought then that he has survived all this and managed to keep them on. He was also uninjured, but I didn’t ask him about that. It was strange that a man so decisive about ideas was lost in a social situation. He didn’t know the appropriate time to end a speech. He didn’t know when or how he should leave. His vulnerability touched me. As well as finding me tonight he had defended me at the Chew It and Spew It.
He said that he and Pat would go now Harry was in good hands. Perhaps tomorrow or later he could come again to see him. Would he be welcome? He was tentative.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but later.’
He and Pat passed my mother. She managed a brief but reluctant thanks.
‘Dr Banks had no right to speak to him in that way,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t there. Nathan and Pat helped me tonight. It wasn’t Harry’s fault. It wasn’t mine and it wasn’t Nathan’s and Pat’s.’
Frank and Bernie-Benito had also risen ready to leave. ‘We’ll go, too, mum,’ Frank said. ‘Harry’s in good hands. Should we do anything else?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Could you tell his mother?’ I found a piece of paper and wrote down her address. ‘Don’t frighten her but she must be told. Ask her to please wait until tomorrow to visit.’
Frank took the paper. Bernie-Benito took my hand and held it lovingly. ‘Judith,’ he crooned, ‘Judith.’ And his eyes large and soulful reminded me of Winnie’s Labrador resting his head on my lap. He had spirited Harry away, probably carried him. His rag-doll appearance was deceptive. There were balls of muscle in his sinewy arms. I reached up, kissed his cheek and whispered, ‘Thank you, Bernie, thank you for everything.’
The next morning my mother put on her hat and gloves to go to the union office. To dress respectably was her defence against the chaos our world had become. We had taken it in turns to watch over Harry during the night and anxiety and weariness had aged her. I made her a cup of tea and some oatmeal porridge, but although she drank several cups of the tea she only poked the porridge around and eventually left it.
‘I can’t eat,’ she said. ‘I must go to the union office. They’ll know what has happened to your father. It’s better I see them than front up at the police station. I don’t see any of us being welcome there.’ She looked spent and bitter. ‘I’m sorry, Judith, it’s very hard on you. You need rest yourself. Are you all right?’
That question again. ‘Yes,’ I repeated for the umpteenth time. How many people now had I reassured? ‘I’m all right.’
‘You don’t look it.’ She was doubtful.
I managed a smile. ‘Looks are deceptive.’
In another situation she would have been suspicious and pursued my assertion. Now at the limit of her endurance, she gratefully accepted it. ‘You’re a good girl, Judith, a good girl.’
She left. I drank a cup of tea and forced down a few mouthfuls of the porridge. I hoped the food might warm me for I felt chilled. Harry still slept. Overcome with lassitude, I wrapped myself in my blanket and sat again in the uncomfortable chair by his side. In the morning light his injuries looked harsher, more cruel, the bruises uglier, the inflamed puffy swelling about his eyes discoloured and raw, his lips cracked. But he was still alive. I dozed. My head jerked forward. I slept.
Dr Banks’ arrival awakened me. He hurried in, brisk and urgent. He had not shaved and his eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. He examined Harry. ‘Wake up, lad,’ he yelled at him.
Harry stirred, tried to move and groaned.
‘He’ll live.’ He patted his shoulder. ‘There’s many a lot worse.’
But his confident medical comparisons failed to reassure me.
‘Give him a few days.’ His tone gentled. ‘And now the truth, young woman. Where were you two last night in this mess?’
I had done enough lying. ‘The Square,’ I said. ‘Victoria Square. The railed area.’
> He grunted. ‘A good thing you were. I’ve a patient in hospital with the print of a horseshoe embedded in his back. His vertebra may be crushed. Stupid fools the lot of you. Mounted police,’ he snorted, ‘on the streets of Adelaide. I don’t know what our society is coming to.’
I remembered the arrival of the four hundred unemployed men at the Free Speech meeting. ‘Starvation,’ I said. ‘Unemployment. Desperation.’
He looked at me keenly and shook his head. ‘Well, I have enough to do without this sort of thing.’ And he stumped out.
Harry managed to whisper, ‘He’s gone?’
‘Yes. He’s our family doctor. Don’t try to talk.’
‘No,’ he sighed, and relapsed into sleep.
Three hours later my mother returned. She walked heavily as if bowed beneath a burden too heavy to carry and sank dispiritedly into a chair. As was her habit, she removed the long hat pin, took off her hat and laid it carefully on the table. Then she pulled off her gloves and laid them neatly beside her hat. Her next step was usually to find her apron and put it on, but today she just sat, too overwrought to move.
‘There were a dozen other women at the union office, all of us, poor working-class wives, all with the same worry. We waited …’
‘For three hours, Mum?’
‘They weren’t unkind to us, just distracted.’
‘But to make you wait for three hours?’
‘They had no time. People rushed about everywhere. There was constant commotion, constant coming and going from Matty Gibbs’s office; agitated people shouting at each other; fuming about intimidation of the union, retaliation, retribution, throwing down the gauntlet to the government, tumult, anger and wild talk. Every face was grim and hostile. There were a couple of newspapermen but they got brushed aside and eventually left.
‘When Matty came to speak with us he apologised. He said the morning had been almost beyond his management skills. Everyone, so-to-speak, was armed and seething. He told me that last night’s attack by the mounted police had swelled the mutterings for forming a Workers’ Defence Army. Like they had in Broken Hill a few years back.’
I knew the Union organiser, Matty Gibbs. He was a courteous man who always managed to negotiate conflicts with fairness and reasonableness but latterly, as the economic situation worsened, he had become more strained, more uncertain of his abilities. Unemployment and the Crimes Act now divided most of his workforce from the rest of the community. He was beginning to feel they were all under siege.
‘He was sympathetic to us,’ she said. ‘Some of the women there have children and are desperate for their husbands to return to whatever work they have. One woman said that only the soup kitchen run by the Salvos stands between them and starvation. He looked distressed, Judith. The burden of social ills falls heavily on those with a conscience.’
I dismissed her sympathy for Matty Gibbs. ‘It’s his job to help.’
‘No,’ she denied, ‘that’s the problem. The meeting was organised by the Communist Party, not the Union. Strictly speaking the Union has no involvement.’
‘No involvement? But my father’s a Union man.’ I could see that explaining it all to me tired her further, but I had to know. I could feel the indignation swelling in me. ‘Are we to receive no help? Not even from the Waterside Workers’ Union?’
‘They will help as far as they can, Judith. Matty promised that Union lawyers would represent your father and others and if necessary they will put up money for bail or bonds. However if the choice is between either jail or a fine they can’t guarantee to pay the fines. It could amount to quite a lot and the Union is strapped for cash. Their priorities are the families of unemployed Union members and they can give them little enough.’
Tears ran down her face. ‘What are we to do, Judith? If there’s a fine we must pay it. Your father mustn’t go to jail. He can’t lose his job. He’s a winchman. The ship owners won’t put up with delays.’
She wept with her head against my shoulder and I clutched her as if I were the parent and she the child.
‘We have so little money saved.’
‘I have some.’
‘Oh, no, Judith. That was to be yours, your future.’
‘Well, I won’t have any future if we don’t have a now. Whatever it is I shall pay. I am quite determined.’
I knew she was relieved but now tasted the bitterness of acceptance.
In the afternoon Winnie and Frank and Harry’s mother visited. Harry’s mother was a timid, defeated creature who looked at her injured son as if he were the ultimate disaster in her life.
One glance and Winnie burst into tears, wailing, ‘Oh, Harry, you look absolutely awful.’
‘Thanks, Weepy,’ he whispered. ‘That’s good to know.’
His mother took a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
We’re going to have a crying competition now, I thought.
‘Your job, Harry. At the foundry?’ his mother questioned, faintly and hopelessly.
‘No need to worry, Mum,’ Frank intervened. ‘We’re sending a couple of blokes around to speak with his boss. I’m sure they’ll make him understand.’
‘How kind of them,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve not met his employer but please thank him for me. I’m sure Harry will be grateful.’
‘Did you hear that, Harry? So kind.’
Harry had heard. He looked at me from the one eye he had managed to open and it held a flicker of his old sense of humour. Harry’s mother was clearly incapable of reading the meaning behind Frank’s words. She was a simple woman and defenceless because of it. I wondered how Harry had inherited or learned so much sophistication—possibly from his long-dead father. The tree people sprang from often grew strange shoots.
My mother, always kind to the vulnerable, made tea and served scones to console Harry’s mother. The three left eventually and I hoped we’d have no more visitors. Harry was clearly exhausted.
My father returned home that evening. He had been bonded to appear in the magistrate’s court at some future date. Unshaven, heavy-eyed and crumpled, he looked dog tired. My mother put her arms about him. Over her shoulder he saw me.
‘You’re all right, Judith?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been worried. And Harry?’
‘The police beat him up,’ I said. ‘He’s in the saloon. But Dr Banks says he’ll recover.’
‘That’s good.’ He reached for a chair and sat down. Careful, measured, slow movements, so unlike his usual vigour.
‘I’m whacked, Eve. It’s hard to believe that a night in the cells could so exhaust me.’ He tried to smile. ‘After all, I’ve done a stint of forty hours on the winches, but jail, there was something villainous about it, something brutalising and hellish in being shut away. Too much of it and I’d be defeated. It’s the inaction, the helplessness. One could so easily get to feel worthless. I kept remembering the windjammers and freedom.’
My father was not given to self-reflection. This tired old man with a confused expression was shockingly new to me and I was devoured by a rage so venomous that its poison consumed me. My father was demoralised, Harry beaten near to death, my mother distraught and afraid, some man I didn’t know had the imprint of a horseshoe on his spine. It wasn’t justice I cried out for, it was revenge, primitive, pestilential revenge. If authority had degenerated to such shamelessness then where were we, its helpless victims? Our feebleness had not been because we were bad characters or transgressors, our weakness lay in being unarmed. We had been lured into a situation where the violence had been apportioned unequally. That was the root of the problem. We could remedy that. Our first defeat need never be our last. The communists were right. We couldn’t beat the police unless we had guns.
These were wild thoughts, bitter imaginings but later, when I had quietened and thrust out the idea of guns, the core of my conviction remained.
Three days later Nathan visited and brought along his sisters. I was surprised. After all, they didn’t know Ha
rry—had indeed ignored and insulted him at the meeting hall—but now they assumed a graciousness that was as irritating as their previous rudeness had been.
They walked into the saloon confidently and without being asked. Certainly a hulk is odd, in that there doesn’t seem to be a formal front door, but some sort of hesitation on the deck would have been courteous. My mother, her antennae alert to any superior patronising, took in their appearance and manner and stiffened. Nathan’s introduction was clumsy. ‘My sisters, Miss Abigail and Miss Adelaide,’ he mumbled, eyeing my mother warily. ‘We hoped to visit Harry. That is, if it’s convenient. That is, if he’s well enough. Judith said …’ he stammered and looked at me appealingly; his eyes large and defenceless like some bush creature, behind huge spectacles.
How could a man so dominant in his opinions be such a weakling in dealing with people? ‘This is Nathan,’ I felt compelled to remind my mother. ‘You remember, he brought me home.’
‘I remember.’ Her iciness did not melt.
‘I’ll take them in to see Harry,’ I hastened. ‘He has been moved into my cabin for his privacy.’ I suspected that Harry would not enjoy their visit, although he might be pleased that Nathan showed his concern. Personal touches meant a lot to Harry. They showed affection and he craved love.
‘There isn’t much room,’ I said as I showed them in and retreated to the saloon.
‘Has there been a funeral in their house?’ my mother was sarcastic.
‘Not as far as I know. They just seem to like black.’
‘Dreadful colour, so draining for an ageing woman. Makes you look like a death’s head, particularly if you’re scrawny.’
‘Shush,’ I laughed, ‘they’ll hear.’
‘Let them. Waltzing in here as if they owned the place—and uninvited, too.’
‘I invited Nathan.’
She sniffed. ‘Not his sisters?’
‘No, not his sisters.’
They reappeared a short time later and hesitated in the saloon. My mother didn’t ask them to sit. Miss Abigail said, ‘Nathan would like to spend a little more time with the young man.’