Hunger Town

by Wendy Scarfe

  When it was their turn to have their billies filled we always gave them an extra helping. No one complained at this special treatment, at least I never heard any resentful comments. It was more often ‘Poor old Herbie’—a generous and grateful sympathy.

  Once I asked around where Herbie lived. There were shrugs. ‘In the camp by the Torrens River’ was the general opinion ‘with the other unemployed blokes.’ I had seen the camp. It was a collection of makeshift lean-tos, made of bits of wood, cardboard, old sacks, tin and canvas. There was a small bricked-in area for a fire and a few buckets for carrying water from the river. I had made drawings of it and captioned them The working man’s paradise and sent them to the Despatch where Nathan worked. He had offered to try to place my cartoons.

  One Monday a woman came in to the hall with two small children, a frightened boy of about six and a silent pale little girl of about four. Their mother, anxious and nervous, carried only a small saucepan, hardly enough for one meal, let alone sufficient for a family. One side of her face was stained by a purpling-greenish bruise. The hand that held the saucepan shook.

  Immediately Herbie went to her side. ‘Been beating you up again, missus?’

  She nodded. Tears ran down her face and she clutched her daughter’s hand. The little boy stood silent and stiff. Herbie took her pathetic saucepan. ‘We can do better than that,’ he said loudly. ‘We can do better than this, can’t we, Mrs Larsen?’ he shouted across the hall and waved the saucepan above his head. The woman cringed, embarrassed, but Herbie saw no shame in it. He marshalled her and the children to the front of the queue. Everyone shuffled back and made room for them.

  My mother found a good-sized saucepan with a lid and Herbie ladled the soup into it up to its brim. Then he squashed on the lid. Liquid squelched down its sides forming a messy glutenous patch on the table. Mrs Danley, supervising the distribution, sighed but said nothing. She went out into the kitchen and returned with a bowl of water and a cloth to mop up the mess. No one would think of reproaching Herbie. My mother and her friends had a secret pact to tolerate him whatever minor inconveniences he caused.

  In triumph Herbie handed the dripping saucepan to the woman. ‘There you are, Mrs Blighty.’

  His eyes were caught by the pale still children. ‘Milk,’ he said, ‘they need milk. We need milk for the children,’ he ordered me loudly. ‘They need to take some milk home.’ He patted them on their heads. ‘Miss Judith will see to that.’

  I hurried to the kitchen, amused to be running at his bidding, searched for and found an empty bottle. I washed it and rinsed it in hot water always boiling in an iron kettle on the stove. That day I was in charge of milk distribution for the children. ‘Our battle against rickets’ my mother had forcefully persuaded the local dairy farmers. It was skim milk, not wanted after the cream was removed, and usually sold to pig farmers for a pittance. My mother cadged it for the children, shaming the dairy farmers into forfeiting the few pence they received if they sold it.

  Herbie led the family out the door. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Perce, you get some other bloke to help lift the boilers. I have to see Mrs Blighty home and have a talk to her husband.’

  Having organised his foot soldiers, he went out. A couple in the queue laughed and although not a hearty laugh it was good to hear. Perce was chiacked. ‘Got yer orders, Perce? Jump to it.’ Perce flushed again but looked proud. Someone said, ‘That’s Herbie all right’. Another, ‘He’ll straighten that Blighty bastard out.’ And a third, ‘Far too quick with his fists.’

  That same day Harry bounced in to the hall. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks and, as I had been so busy coping with my own affairs, had not met with Winnie to hear news of him.

  As if we had met only yesterday he bounded up to me and gave me a bear-like hug. ‘How do, Comrade Judith?’ His cheer was genuine, unforced and unapologetic. I wanted to be annoyed at his neglect and appear remote and hurt but my mother’s warm welcome undermined my intentions.

  ‘Where have you been, Harry? We’ve missed you.’

  ‘The foundry closed, Mrs L. Jobless now, isn’t it great? Hated that place. The smell of quicklime made me gag.’ Despite his bravado he was shocked.

  ‘The Chew It closed, too,’ I said. He wasn’t entitled to have the shock of joblessness on his own.

  ‘Well, you’ll be as overjoyed as me. You hated that place.’

  ‘It was a job,’ I said tightly, ‘and money. How are you managing? And your mother?’

  ‘In a minute,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I’m going to find a place in the queue and take her home a bowl of your delicious soup. See, I’ve brought my billy.’

  ‘Harry!’ I was horrified. ‘Your mother. How will she— ?’

  ‘Judith,’ he interrupted me, the humour fallen away, ‘Judith, we’re all in this together, and the sooner we realise that we are working-class people, all with the same working-class problems, the better it will be.’

  ‘Better for whom?’ I asked tartly. ‘You’ve been talking to Nathan.’

  ‘And why not?’ He was defensive.

  Yes, I thought, why not? Nathan’s ideas made some sense.

  ‘So, comrade Judith, how about a bit of soup for a poor working-class boy?’

  But there was a certain bitter twist to his mouth, an ironic gleam in his eye, which made me wonder if he had managed to grow into the new clothes he had put on. ‘Don’t call me comrade,’ I was peevish. ‘It sounds false. You don’t have to prove your Bolshie leanings to me.’ He grinned.

  ‘Did you see my cartoon in the Broken Hill paper?’

  ‘Of course. Nathan showed me. He was very impressed.’

  ‘And you, Harry?’

  He shifted uncomfortably. ‘It was me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hate to remember, just hate it, Judith. But Nathan said I should be proud and that you’re a genius and would be a great help to the Communist Party.’

  ‘So?’ I questioned. I waited expectantly.

  ‘I thought it was quite good.’

  ‘Thank you, Harry,’ I mocked. ‘I’m glad that you and Nathan approved of it.’

  He grinned at me again and the few weeks in which he hadn’t contacted me were forgotten.

  ‘How are you living, Harry?’

  He was serious. ‘I play the piano at a couple of dance halls at The Semaphore. They pay me six shillings a night until midnight. After that the dancers have to take up a collection for me to go on playing. Usually that brings in another couple of bob. I tried the Labour Exchange but there’s no foundry work and as you know they ballot the few jobs that are around.

  ‘It’s pretty humiliating, hanging about to see if your name gets drawn out of a hat. The blokes hate it. Some of them pretend they don’t care. They strut around blowing out their chests, telling everyone that today their luck is in, and then they switch their mood and become cynical. How fortunate they’ll be to get one day’s work and be able to return for another good luck ballot. It’s all bravado and when they don’t get picked they look crumpled and defeated. Some of them just leave, give up, they can’t stand it any more.

  ‘At least I earn something piano playing. Most of the other poor bastards can’t do anything except a bit of manual work. Nathan’s right, Judith. The way our society runs just stinks. And you, what are you doing? Working here all the time? Has your dad any work?’

  ‘A little,’ I said. ‘Winchmen are more in demand than lumpers. There are fewer of them. But it’s hard because not many ships are coming in and he’s needed less.’

  ‘Then you’re here every day?’

  ‘No, I’ve enrolled at the School of Design and Art. I’m studying drawing.’

  His eyes widened. ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes, I have, Harry.’

  ‘Oh, Judith, lucky you. Do they teach tap dancing at this art place?’

  I laughed, but was uncomfortable. There was envy in his voice and I didn’t know how to respo
nd to it. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘It’s not a school of dance.’

  He recovered himself and his normal generosity. ‘Good luck to you, Judith. I guess I’ll have to wait until we have a communist state and they pay me to learn to dance.’

  His longing was so real that I couldn’t laugh at him and I felt both guilty and resentful at his response to what was for me such a minor opportunity that might never lead anywhere.

  When he left I went into the kitchen to help wash the boilers, cauldrons, saucepans and ladles we had used. I thought of Herbie and his uncomplicated generosity. There were days when he was a little overpowering and we had to grit our teeth. Sometimes he would patrol up and down the line pushing people into a more orderly row, or he collected a child who had strayed, admonishing them to return to their parents and not get lost, although there was little likelihood of that in the enclosed hall. Sometimes he took it upon himself to greet or welcome people. For the elderly or pregnant he fussed around and found a stool or old wooden chair. If anyone, particularly a woman, looked exhausted he pottered into the kitchen and made a pot of tea in an old tin teapot. Then he carried the cup out to her. For all these small services and his stalwart help, Herbie was loved.

  My mother dug out an old flannelette shirt of my father’s and carefully re-washed and pressed it. She also found an old cardigan and woollen socks. When she gave them to Herbie with a careless, ‘You might find some use for these’ he took them gingerly, turned them over, and examined the cloth carefully as if he were buying from the best store in town. At last he looked up at my mother. ‘Thanks, missus,’ he said, ‘they’ll come in handy,’ but she swore that not long afterwards she recognised the shirt on a frail young man new to the soup kitchen. He coughed and looked consumptive. She never mentioned the matter to Herbie but she wondered to me where the cardigan and socks might have gone. Certainly Herbie never wore them.

  ‘Gone to a good home,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘It will certainly be a needy one.’

  I thought about Herbie and my thoughts about his kindness were like an oasis for me because day after day there was little but anger and bitterness at the Port.

  In a few days Justice Beeby’s ruling about the new award for the waterside workers was to be brought down in the Arbitration Court. The papers were full of it. The Despatch and the Register trumpeted the claims of the ship owners for lower wages. Profits had fallen. Fewer ships entered the harbour. To save the country, workers now had to do ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’.

  On my walk to and from the soup kitchen I passed knots of men arguing, gesticulating, shouting, thumping rolled-up copies of the newspapers on their hands, boiling with indignation that they were accused of not doing a fair day’s work and blamed for the rotten state of the country.

  But beneath the defiance was fear. I felt it at the soup kitchen where desperate women muttered the word ‘strike’ to each other and shuddered as if it were a death knell. The few days’ work their husbands now got was better than nothing. Anxiety swept like a contagion through the community. Everybody waited and the waiting was agony. My father went about grim faced.

  ‘If Beeby sides with the ship owners for a two pick-up will you strike?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s a last resort,’ he said heavily. ‘Strikes are pretty hopeless in bad times. The union is short of funds. We can’t support people. None of us want it but there’s a point beyond which men can’t be squeezed. Beeby is a labour man. We can only hope he sees our plight.’

  But I knew that his hope did not match his expectation. Whatever Beeby’s labour background my father did not trust him. And he was right not to do so, although being proved right wasn’t much consolation.

  Justice Beeby agreed with the ship owners that two pick-ups for wharf labour, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, would help the economy. Personally I couldn’t see the connection but it sounded grand in the headlines, as if by a single stroke of the pen Beeby had saved the country. Now fleets of ships would steam into our ports, more wheat and coal would be loaded, profits would skyrocket.

  ‘My fat arse,’ my father said and spat his disgust and disillusionment into the river.

  My mother knew it meant a strike and, thinking not only of us but the women coming to the soup kitchen, she prepared and served the tea with a listless hopelessness. My father tried to console her. ‘It may not come to a strike, Eve. Our disputes committee will meet with the bosses. Perhaps …’

  ‘Perhaps, Niels,’ she said tiredly.

  He jumped up and hugged her. ‘Not my brave girl,’ he said. ‘This is not like you, Eve.’

  ‘Just a bit tired,’ she said, an admission that we had never heard before.

  It was the sense of betrayal that wounded so deeply. Although there had been little expectation that Beeby would consider the unionists, there had also been a lingering deeply seated faith that a labour man was always a labour man. People felt bereft. There seemed to be no one they could trust.

  Shock was the first reaction, followed by disbelief, dismay, disgust and finally fury. Justice Beeby and his rulings could go to hell. When did the Arbitration Court ever help working people? Someone sang, ‘We’ll hang Judge Beeby from the nearest bloody tree,’ and soon everyone was singing it, defiant and belligerent. The police could hardly arrest people for singing but they watched suspiciously. Copies of the Despatch and the Register were seen shredded and floating in the sea where men had pitched them.

  The two pick-up system meant a reduction in wages. Anyone lucky enough to get a day’s work on the wharves now only got half a day. Any man who lived a distance from the Port and failed to get work for the first pick-up had to hang around for three hours to try his luck for the second. If that, too, failed he went home with only the pitiful amount of appearance money. This was the final stab in the back for the Port already buffeted by long-term unemployment.

  My father was working at the Outer Harbor loading three-bushel bags of wheat on the Minnipa when Beeby’s decision became law. He arrived home late in the afternoon having trudged the eight miles. ‘When we heard,’ he said wearily, ‘we called a stop work. We were all mad as hell and voted not to return to work. We left the bags of wheat on the wharf and just walked off. I hope the rats get into the whole bloody lot of them. The cockies are no help to us.’

  ‘They’re doing it tough, too,’ my mother said. ‘Wheat prices are down. Some are walking off their farms.’

  My father drank his cup of tea, exhausted and dejected. ‘So we fight each other and that’s how it’s likely to be and we’ll probably put more energy into that than fighting the bosses. We don’t mean to kill the poor bloody cockies while we struggle for ourselves but what else can we do? There’ll have to be a strike. They’ll have us on starvation wages soon.

  ‘And you know, Eve, they’re pushing the situation so they can bring in scabs to take our jobs. It’s always been their intention. It’s as clear now as the nose on your face. We’ll have to compete with starved ignorant Italians and down-and-out Europeans who can’t find work in their own country and come here expecting a workers’ bloody paradise.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Let’s all sing a new hit tune for September 1928: “We’ll hang Justice Beeby from the nearest bloody tree”.’ He slumped off to change his work clothes. He looked haggard and my mother care-worn.

  It seemed that now we were all dragging along, one minute gritting our teeth with a determination to survive, the next given to spurts of anger and protest and this emotional roller coaster repeated itself day after day. Just when we felt nothing more awful could happen, it did.

  I was in this dispirited mood when, on my way to the soup kitchen, I ran into Nathan outside the Labour Exchange. He greeted me enthusiastically. ‘Your cartoon in the Barrier Daily Truth is going everywhere, Judith. Everyone is talking about it.’

  ‘Everyone in the Communist Party you mean, Nathan? All thirty of them?’

  He looked put out
and I felt mean, but I was in no mood for Nathan’s fantasies. He had the Despatch tucked under his arm.

  ‘Helping capitalists distribute their lousy propaganda are you, Nathan? How can you bear to print their lies?’

  He looked at me as if I were some ignorant child who couldn’t see past her nose.

  ‘It helps the cause.’

  ‘What cause?’

  ‘Our cause.’

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘It makes people see exactly what capitalism is and does.’

  ‘No it doesn’t. It persuades them that it’s OK.’

  He pursed his mouth. ‘You don’t understand, Judith. Through their suffering working people will eventually become enlightened and then we’ll be able to lead them to a new order. It happened in Russia. It can happen here.’

  ‘How simple you make it all sound, Nathan. I sent a cartoon to the Despatch. Did you see it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘when?’

  ‘About ten days ago.’

  ‘I’ll look for it. We’re not indifferent to the plight of the poor.’

  We? I thought. Just where did Nathan stand in all of this? In one breath we were the Communist Party, in the next breath we were the Despatch.

  Excusing myself I left. I was needed at the kitchen. I didn’t mention Harry. I didn’t feel comfortable talking about Harry to Nathan. I didn’t want him to feel that we shared Harry.

  At first I had been nervous about attending art classes. It was many years since I had experienced the disciplines of learning. I feared that what I wanted to do would be scoffed at by those better off, better educated and more talented. My humble cartoon in the Broken Hill paper now seemed a nothing, only praised by those who loved me or were like-minded. It could not possibly achieve merit in a wider world. I was a fool to leap from years at the Chew It and Spew It into this new world, unknown and possibly unknowable.

  I made it down the passage as wobbly in the legs as a sick person who has lain in bed too long. Perhaps that’s what I am, I thought gloomily. I nearly turned tail and ran. My familiar even if confining world suddenly seemed comfortable and safe. I could manage to do my cartoons on my own. I didn’t need to subject myself to this. We at the Port were battlers. I could battle alone.