Hunger Town

by Wendy Scarfe

  ‘Each time I see you, you grow more handsome, Mr Larsen.’ She tilted her eyes at him.

  ‘And you, Miss Winnifred, are a forward young woman, flirting with a man old enough to be your father.’

  ‘I like older men,’ she said, peeping at him from under her lashes.

  ‘Winnie!’ Harry was shocked. ‘That is too much.’

  She grinned. ‘Is it “too much”, Mr Larsen?’ she appealed. ‘Aren’t you experienced? You’ve travelled the world, captained great ships in wild seas, seen so much more than the rest of us, had adventures.’ She turned innocent eyes on Harry. ‘And what did you think I meant?’

  Harry frowned but sidestepped. ‘Did you know, Winnie, that Mr Larsen lived with the Eskimos?’

  ‘Golly,’ she said, ‘was it very cold?’

  My father laughed. ‘Most of the time.’

  My mother indulged them but I felt a frisson of jealousy. My father had never been jocular with me. I had no memories of jokes, fewer of shared laughter, but I supposed I had been a solemn reticent child. Suddenly I longed to be like Winnie—bright, appealing, seeking and receiving affection—and all so easily.

  Harry was watching me. Were my longings reflected in my face? He was astute. He jumped up. ‘Mrs Larsen, Mr Larsen, we should all go out. It’s a lovely day. Not too hot. This morning at dawn when I woke the sky was streaky bacon with cotton wool clouds and I thought, Here’s a sizzler coming. But it hasn’t. We could go to the Semaphore, walk along the jetty, buy an ice cream and forget there’s a bloody depression.’

  All joyousness, he was pulling me out of my chair. Winnie clapped her hands. ‘Yes, please, Mrs Larsen. You and Mr Larsen please come with us.’

  My mother demurred. ‘No, we’ll have a quiet afternoon. I’ve a book to read. Mr Larsen has some jobs about the hulk. You all go. It’ll do you good.’

  I hesitated. ‘Are you sure? You don’t go out much.’

  She gave me a gentle push. ‘Get your hat, Judith.’

  Winnie took my arm as we walked to the stop to catch the electric tram that ran between the Port and the Semaphore.

  Harry admonished, ‘Winnie, you should be more respectful of Judith’s father.’

  She rolled her eyes at him. ‘I’m not disrespectful, am I, Judith?’

  Caught between the two of them I laughed, ‘Of course not.’

  Winnie looked triumphant. ‘There, Harry.’ And mockingly she hummed: What’ll I do when skies are blue and you’re not here, what’ll I do?

  ‘Oh, Winnie, you …’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Harry, you,’ she mimicked and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  ‘I’ve decided to be happy, Judith,’ she announced.

  ‘Have you been unhappy, Winnie?’ I remembered her storm of tears when we had met for lunch but had assumed that it was merely one of her short-lived moods. She shrugged. ‘Well, you know what it’s like, Jude. Everyone is so damned miserable these days. It’s catching. You should understand. You’re surrounded by miserable people, too. Do you like my hat?’

  I was surprised by her sudden change of topic. ‘Yes, it’s very pretty.’

  It was a wide-brimmed natural straw, the crown encircled by a wreath of delphinium-blue forget-me-nots.

  ‘Sixpence in a second-hand shop.’ She looked smug. ‘You needn’t look like that, Judith. I’ve discovered that some second-hand shops have the most divine clothes and all at bargain prices. Daddy gives me my monthly allowance. It’s not much these days, so I go hunting. It’s such fun, Judith. You ought to come with me. They usually have little cubicles, just like a doll’s house, where you can try things on. Of course, I don’t buy second-hand underwear. That would be a bit nasty but who needs hand-made underwear? Factory stuff is quite good enough. After all, who sees it?’

  I looked at her cautiously. Any response on my part might be the wrong one. It must be a pretence, even if a brave one. Any moment I expected the sniffles to begin, followed by a storm of weeping, but she walked beside me prattling on blithely and I had to believe that Winnie, the Fastidious, had taken to second-hand clothing shops like a duck to water.

  ‘You should come with me one day, Judith,’ she urged.

  ‘You know I hate shopping for clothes, Winnie.’

  She assessed me. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes. You needn’t say I look like that, Winnie.’

  She was shocked. ‘I wouldn’t say that, Judith. You always look nice. But it’s such fun.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s good works, Judith,’ she wheedled, piously. ‘The charity shops need the money. They are always so pleased to see me.’

  There was nothing I could do but laugh. ‘Oh. You, Winnie,’ I said, ‘you’re such a …’ I hesitated. ‘Darling.’ I was going to say ‘such a card’ but that was Harry’s pet expression for me and I was reluctant to share it.

  It was a glittering day. The sea glistened, so calm I could have smoothed my hand across its surface as if it were a piece of stretched green cloth. Occasionally a silver leaping fish caught the sun on its back. The Semaphore jetty jutted into the sea, its long arm needed to cope with the vast tidal rises and falls of the gulf.

  We strolled along it. Winnie ogled the young men, who invariably followed her progress with their eyes, and always looked back when they had passed us. Harry occasionally greeted a fisherman. Everyone was in his or her Sunday best. Some of the women even carried frivolous frilled parasols.

  At the pavilion, on the sea-end of the jetty, the Port City Band played a selection of songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Harry, who had played the piano for some amateur theatricals, sang along, his light tenor voice very sweet. When he sang ‘Dear little Buttercup’ Winnie played up to him. She put a finger coyly under her chin, flirted her eyes, and danced a few steps to match his. A few people stopped to watch, amused, indulgent expressions on their faces. They made an enchanting pair: Harry lithe, handsome in his boyish way, the sun striking a halo of his bronze hair; Winnie, with her big straw hat, melting eyes and plump little figure.

  For a moment I felt an outsider and then, as Harry smiled at me over Winnie’s head, I knew a surge of love so forceful that I shook. To lose Harry would catapult me into some dreadful dark abyss where nothing mattered any more. I put up an arm to cover my eyes against the sun’s glare but knew it to be an instinctive gesture to protect myself from such a black fear.

  I emerged from this momentary bleakness to find an ice cream thrust into my hand. ‘You were away with the fairies,’ Winnie said, ‘so we bought you this.’

  We all licked happily, childishly up-ending the cones to catch the ice cream that trickled onto our hands. Winnie tried to wipe off the stickiness and giggled. ‘Just like those posters,’ she said. ‘You remember how hopeless I was, Judith.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ I said, ‘and you certainly weren’t hopeless.’

  It was a happy afternoon. Winnie left us to take the return train from the Semaphore into the city, Harry accompanying me back to the hulk. He looked serious.

  ‘Judith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m very worried about the women’s march.’

  I was surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘You could be hurt. The police are becoming more savage. Everything is a wild battle these days.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But this is different. There’ll be women and children and babies in prams. You should have seen them the other night. It’s more likely to look like a family outing picnic day than a protest march. Nobody’s going to be violent. Not even the police would attack unarmed women.’

  But he wasn’t convinced. ‘I brought these for you,’ and he handed me a brown paper bag.

  I peeped inside. There were a number of little coloured glass marbles.

  ‘Oh, Harry. We used to play with marbles when we were kids. I had quite a collection and a favourite tor. I don’t know what happened to them.’

  ‘They’re not for playing, Judith.’

  ‘I didn’t e
xpect they were. But what?’

  ‘If you are attacked, Judith, by mounted police, throw them on the ground under the horses.’

  I was shocked. ‘You mean the poor horses will fall?’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Anything rather than you take the beating I received in Victoria Square.’

  I was sober. That memory haunted me. ‘I’m not sure, Harry. It seems … We don’t want to precipitate violence.’

  ‘Whatever it seems, promise me, Judith, you’ll use them if you are threatened.’

  ‘Are you sure they’ll work?’

  He shrugged. ‘No, I’m not sure, but it’s the only thing you can carry secretly that might help you.’ I assured him that I would take them, if only to lift the worried frown from his face. It all seemed unnecessarily dramatic but when I remembered the events at Victoria Square I wasn’t so sure.

  We had planned the women’s march to begin at 10.30 in the morning. We judged that this would give the women time to feed their babies, see their children to school, perhaps start preparing their husband’s lunch—that is if they had a husband to come home to the midday meal. We hoped to start on time but it was difficult because everyone would have to walk from their homes to the Federation Hall; some come quite a distance.

  The night meeting at the Federation Hall had given us a picture of what the march might be like: a number of nervous, anxious, uncertain women with babies, toddlers and small children they couldn’t leave at home.

  The morning was cool, so my mother and I put on coats. Mine had a pocket. I looked doubtfully at Harry’s bag of marbles, picked them up, let them roll around in my fingers, put them back in the drawer, jammed my hat on my head and turned to leave the cabin. At the door I hesitated. I had promised Harry. There should be no harm in carrying them. I would never under any circumstances throw them under the horses’ hooves. It appalled me to think of injuring horse and rider. And yet again I remembered the mounted police in Victoria Square. I snatched up the marbles and dropped them into my pocket. They clinked so I added a couple of handkerchiefs to muffle the sound.

  My mother waited for me by the gangplank. She laughed nervously as I took her arm. ‘What if no one comes, Judith? None of them has done this sort of thing before.’

  ‘We haven’t either,’ I said.

  ‘No. Mrs Danley is always so confident, but you can’t make people do these things.’

  ‘They’ll come, Mum. You’ll see. Remember them at the soup kitchen—so thrilled to be doing something other than the daily grind to survive. For once they felt a smidgeon of power.’

  She looked unconvinced. ‘With a group, Judith, all things seem possible. But alone at home over the kitchen sink, sweeping floors, feeding baby, all this may seem remote. Outside their experience. Beyond their possibilities.’

  She was right and it was useless to continue trying to reassure her. Neither of us knew whether they would come. The whole day and all the planning might just fizzle.

  We crossed the concrete apron that backed the wharves, negotiated the web of rail lines and dodged the rail trucks that trundled and clanged perpetually along tracks that snaked everywhere. The huge stone and brick warehouses for wool storage loomed over us. We passed the dockside tavern where already a number of men lolled on outside benches, a glass of beer in their hands.

  My mother pursed her lips. ‘It wasn’t much use closing some taverns in the Port when so many are still here.’ It was her constant complaint.

  My father had joked that she should join the Social Purity Movement, particularly as she now worked for the Salvation Army. She was tart. ‘It’s all very well for you, Niels. You have one beer and stop. Others are not so restrained. The women I see daily would break your heart.

  ‘And don’t wink at Judith,’ she had snapped. ‘And now don’t pretend to be contrite.’

  We arrived early at the Federation Hall. A few women waited inside but most hovered awkwardly on the street. They had formed into small friendship groups, chatting and laughing. Mrs Danley bustled around. She gave me a handful of leaflets, the ones Nathan had printed at the Port Beacon, and I went from group to group distributing them.

  The women took them gingerly and looked anxious. ‘What do we do with these, Judith?’

  ‘Mrs Danley says to give them out to passers-by as we march along.’

  They were bemused. ‘Should we leave the march, then? How will we get back in again?’

  It seemed that they thought of the march in terms of soldiers, regimented and in place. ‘Only hand them out if you can and feel comfortable but otherwise keep them for friends or relatives who aren’t here.’

  ‘Will that do any good?’

  ‘It’s important to tell people about our protest.’

  They looked disbelieving. One woman, more outspoken, was cynical. ‘More talk, more telling. What’s the use if they don’t look and see?’ Her friends nodded.

  I moved on. Yes, I thought, she’s right. We all struggle to tell. A sort of blind faith. Even my cartoons.

  The numbers grew. Mostly the women arrived in small groups, having collected their neighbours. Only an occasional woman came alone to stand lost and embarrassed on the outskirts. But Mrs Danley had eyes everywhere. ‘Look after her, Judith, she must have some friends here, someone from her own neighbourhood.’

  Usually I found that she did and she was rapidly absorbed into a group.

  As the numbers increased, so did the excitement and the noise. Children finding friends dodged in and out between the adults, playing tag, shrieking and squealing. Mothers yelled at them, or ran to clutch them as they raced past. An occasional one was grabbed and admonished with a sharp slap. Toddlers confused by the noise and the dense press of bodies wailed miserably. Babies in prams slept on oblivious.

  Most of the women wore their cheap rayon day dresses with dark coats of brown, navy or black. The idea that they could change their day dress meant for work into something smarter had long gone out the door. Once these dresses were perhaps patterned but now, washed, ironed and patched, they had faded to a uniform grey. They all wore frayed gloves with mended finger holes. Cloche hats, only a sad reminder of their former prettiness, were shabby but still worn, for to go out without a hat was unthinkable. And they all looked so tired. Was it cruel to involve them in this additional effort?

  Their dark coats looked strangely nocturnal in the morning sunshine and together they had the grey of an overcast day.

  Miss Marie stepped down from her taxi and made her regal path through the crowd like dawn breaking through a mass of sooty clouds. She was a gasp of radiant colour, resplendent in the red, blue and white of the French flag. All eyes followed her.

  ‘Well, mon amie,’ she said taking my arm, ‘this is the great day, n’est ce pas? And they are all here. All these wonderful women. There is such power in women,’ and once again she held out her arms to embrace me.

  A few women giggled. Some smiled indulgently. But all who saw her nodded and looked pleased.

  ‘You shed lustre everywhere,’ I said, a trifle dryly. ‘And why the French colours?’

  On this occasion I thought she might have been a little less ostentatious. But from the smiles around her it seemed that nobody minded such a gorgeous contrast with themselves. And that was her magic.

  She looked wise. ‘Revolution, Judith, revolution.’

  I opened my mouth to comment and it remained open for pushing her way towards me was Winnie. She pounced on me. ‘Judith, here you are. I thought I mightn’t be able to find you. There must be hundreds here.’

  I gaped at her, thunderstruck. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  She bridled at my shock. ‘The same thing that you’re doing.’ Her little face puckered with determination.

  ‘But, Winnie, it’s not for you.’

  ‘And why not?’ She had that mulish expression I knew only too well. ‘Harry said I should come. If you could do it, so should I.’

  I was furious, ‘Damn H
arry. And who is going to look after you?’

  ‘Judith,’ she said, ‘you don’t go and shop in second-hand shops, do you?’

  ‘And what has that to do with anything?’

  ‘Not anything, Judith, everything. Experience,’ she added loftily.

  Miss Marie watched us with amusement. ‘I’m Marie,’ she interrupted prettily, ‘from the Arts School.’

  Winnie noted that Marie held my arm. She looked Marie up and down and took my other arm. ‘I’m Winnie,’ she responded coldly. ‘Harry’s cousin. You know Harry, her fiancé. I’m family.’

  Miss Marie’s mouth quirked. She had a repertoire of experiences in dealing with young students, like Winnie. ‘Not to meet,’ she said, ‘but, of course, Judith speaks of him.’

  Winnie turned to me. ‘Well,’ she declared, ‘here I am.’

  ‘Winnie,’ I wailed, ‘it could be dangerous.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ she said stoutly. ‘Well, not much.’

  ‘She’s not scared, Judith,’ Miss Marie was approving. ‘Of course she should come. Dear Winnie, where else would a brave sensible woman like yourself be on this day of all days?’

  Winnie melted. ‘Nobody thinks I have any political opinions, but I do. You’d be surprised, Judith. She thinks I’m hopeless, Miss Marie, just because I couldn’t stick up those silly posters. They were so, well, so sticky.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Infuriatingly Marie agreed with her. ‘I find posters abominably sticky myself. All over your fingers, and then to get the bits of paper off, mon Dieu, it’s impossible, and glue on your dress and in your hair.’

  Winnie was amazed. ‘Yes, it was just like that. Horrible.’

  The two of them looked like a pair of smug conspirators.

  ‘Damn Harry,’ I hissed at them. ‘He’s got no right to interfere. You’re not coming, Winnie. You can go home right now.’