by Wendy Scarfe
I followed him to the wharf and, while he held the bicycle, perched myself precariously on its crossbar. ‘It won’t work, Harry. I’ll fall off.’
‘Of course you won’t. See, my arms will be about you. In a minute, anyway.’
And as I tried to keep my balance by clutching him he leaned towards me and kissed me on the mouth. ‘We should get married one day,’ he said casually.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, with equal casualness. ‘I’ll think about it one day but I have too much to do at present.’
‘Thank you, Judith,’ he pretended to be rueful. ‘It’s good to know I’m in the queue.’
‘Oh, Harry, you,’ I imitated Winnie. We both laughed and I felt comforted that we could always laugh together.
Our journey to the timber yard was perilous and erratic. We lurched across a pothole that nearly tipped us both off. I was laughing hysterically by the time we arrived on the outskirts of the chaotic crowd of men, women and children. Everyone milled around outside the high paling fence, either shoving to see if they could get near enough to jump up and peek over the fence or else eagerly questioning their neighbours as to what they might know or have seen.
Harry pushed through with me and his bicycle and propped it against the fence. ‘Climb up, Judith. Have a look.’ He supported the bike and a couple of blokes nearby helped me scramble up onto the crossbar. The three of them supported me so I couldn’t fall.
‘What can you see?’ They were avid. ‘How many are there? Are they Eyties? Are they scared? Are there police there?’
‘A whole crowd of men,’ I relayed.
‘And?’ They were eager.
‘They look pretty poor and down and out. And scared.’
‘Good. They should be terrified.’ My two helpers grunted with satisfaction. ‘They’ll find there’s more to be terrified about tomorrow.’
I was urged to dismount so that others could share my good fortune but Harry demanded his right, as it was his bike. He hung on to the top of the fence. ‘There’s a few coppers inside,’ he reported. ‘They’re not taking much notice of us.’
‘They’ve been ordered to protect the scabs.’ Someone next to us was knowledgeable. ‘Full government protection, guaranteed. They’ve brought in up-country coppers and installed them in the stables down the road, horses on the ground floor, coppers in the loft. Some of them up-country lads have ridden down on their own horses.’ He guffawed. ‘Country horses will be next to useless in a crowd riot. They’ll panic more than the people.’
He spat at his feet. ‘That’ll be a sight to see. A couple of gunshots and you’ll not see them for dust. Police horses! I ask you! As they gallop full tilt down the main street of the Port heading for the hills of home.’ He snorted and spat again.
The crowd was growing restless. Inactivity didn’t suit them. They needed an outlet for their rage. A couple of blokes wrestled with some palings of the fence trying to tear them loose but they only had their bare hands and it was useless. Bikes were in demand and shared around, but only a few managed to see over the fence. Some of the children started to whine; they were bored and tired and wanted to go home. Women, unable to keep them quiet, began to drift away.
A small knot of men formed in the middle of the mob and a stone and a bottle flew over our heads and into the yard. Immediately things livened up. People searched the ground for missiles and a volley of stones, lumps of wood and glass bottles hurtled over the fence accompanied by a loud chorus of ‘Scabs! Scabs! Scabs!’.
The few police, who had hovered at the back of the crowd, grew edgy. Their officer, a local man, tried to calm things. ‘Now, boys,’ he admonished, ‘take it easy. There’s no point in chucking stones.’
Their cautions were feeble and futile; there were not enough police to be effective. Most of them were inside the yard. The crowd mocked them and they looked helpless and uncomfortable. Jock and Bernie-Benito arrived just when matters began to look more dangerous.
‘Here’s real trouble,’ I said to Harry. ‘Let’s go. All we need now is Jock’s rabble rousing.’ The fence was a terrifying reminder of the railings in Victoria Square. In a riot we could be pinned against it, trapped again.
‘No,’ he said urgently, holding my arm. ‘Wait. I think they’ve got something else in mind.’
Bernie-Benito edged through the crowd, grinned at Harry, seized his bike and clambered up on it so his head stuck over the fence. Then, in a voice sonorous and resounding, he let fly a harangue in Italian. I didn’t understand a word but its passion could not be doubted. I caught the words ‘Mussolini’ and ‘fascism’ and ‘unions’ and ‘popolo’. I had never imagined that Bernie’s voice could carry with such resonance. We had grown used to the silence imposed on him by his lack of English.
Jock held the bike and smiled about him with satisfaction and triumph. He had indeed pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Everyone listened to the rich cadences of Bernie’s Italian as if by sheer effort we could interpret it. He finished, raised his fist as Jock would have done, and launched full-throated into singing Avanti popolo.
The police, who like everyone else had been stunned by the unexpected, now mobilised and tried to push through the crowd to grab him. But the crowd closed ranks. Bernie jumped down from the bike. Briefly I saw his head, then, as he had always managed to do, he melted into the crowd. When the police at last reached the fence where he had been he had disappeared. They knew it was no use questioning anyone. The blank, bland faces all around conveyed quite clearly that no one would tell them anything.
That evening I sketched a cartoon of the morning’s events at the timber yard. I headed the cartoon ZOO ENTRY. Over a paling fence I drew a crowd of faces looking in on a gaggle of dishevelled men. On the fence I inscribed FREE LABOURERS. One face in the crowd of onlookers asks another, What strange animals are these? I sent it to the Barrier Daily Truth.
A week later I was to receive my five shillings and a copy of the issue using my cartoon. I didn’t think it was my best work but Nathan and Jock, by this time, had printed copies of it in the Port Beacon, a small pamphlet they ran off on a duplicator at Nathan’s home. Usually the Beacon was full of communist theory and urgings to the proletariat to rise up and throw off the shackles of capitalist oppression. But in this issue they printed my cartoon. Harry sold them around the streets and pinned up a copy of the cartoon in shops and hotels. To the people in the Port mockery became a delightful subversion and laughter a secret unassailable power.
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 C
ollar 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.’
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.