by Wendy Scarfe
I grinned at her. ‘Of course, I’ll do a little—as little as possible. And don’t say “Poor Harry” as if the absence of a wife devoted to his domestic comfort will somehow leave him deprived.’
She chuckled. ‘Harry’s so sweet-tempered I doubt he’ll ever criticise you.’
And I didn’t tell her that I baulked at the idea that I should be grateful for Harry’s sweet temper. As far as I was concerned our marriage was a marriage of equals.
Harry and I did the rounds of second-hand shops searching for a wardrobe, chest of drawers, kitchen table, chairs and a food-safe. We found two old wooden rocking chairs for the parlour and my mother made us some cushion covers, which I stuffed with kapok. We had found an old iron bedstead but we had been extravagant on a new mattress. It was cheap but clean and firm.
Harry continued to be assiduous for any telltale signs of borers or bed bugs. Bed bugs were particularly hard to detect because usually the furniture had been wiped over and there were no signs of smeared blood. They were cunning little blighters that slid into the smallest interstices where they hid and thrived before their nightly attacks. Often children at the soup kitchen arrived with ridges of raised welts across their legs and arms, which they scratched frantically. We always had a bottle of bicarb-soda and regularly dabbed the sufferers with a gluey mixture of soda and water. Afterwards they looked like little spotted clowns.
We were very excited to see our purchases installed and went from room to room hand-in-hand exclaiming how nice everything looked and how clever we had been to manage so cheaply. Harry cleaned and polished the front windows and I swept and scrubbed the old linoleum floors. Its pattern was faded and it was cracked in places but we couldn’t afford to replace it so in front of the parlour fireplace, where there was a large hole, I decided to put the rag mat which had always been in my cabin on the hulk.
It was the mat more than anything else that made me realise the complete change that was about to take place in my life and when I took it up I burst into tears. My mother put her arms about me. ‘My little cabin,’ I sobbed. ‘I won’t ever sleep here again when I’m married. I won’t smell the sea or hear it lap against the wharf. I don’t like our new house. It’s horrible.’
She consoled me. ‘No, my dear, of course it’s not. You can come back here to sleep whenever you want. Your father and I aren’t going away. Your house in town is only a little change and you’ll love it. So much to look forward to.’
I hiccuped, miserably certain that she was deceiving me and that I wouldn’t enjoy my future life one jot.
However Harry’s enthusiasm for the mat lessened my misery. ‘It looks grand, Judith,’ he said, ‘and it’s so generous of you. I’m sure you didn’t like taking it from your cabin.’ He touched it lovingly. ‘It’ll be our special treasure. I love hand-made things.’
Darling Harry, so many of his feelings matched mine.
Winnie and I went shopping for my wedding outfit. Winnie was ecstatic.
‘No, Winnie,’ I forestalled her, ‘don’t give it a moment’s thought. I’m not going all in white, done up like a wedding cake. I need a nice dress that I can wear again for best.’
She looked disappointed but accepting. ‘I suppose that’s sensible. You won’t have much money.’
‘No.’
‘A second-hand shop? They’ve usually got great bargains.’
‘No, Winnie, something brand new, from Myers I think. One of the new rayons.’
‘OK.’ She looked resigned. ‘It won’t be much fun. Myers is so very staid.’
I took her arm. ‘How you’ve changed, Winnie. We’re a bit like the two bears—one got better and the other got wuss.’
She giggled. ‘I suppose it’s thinking about marriage that has sobered you.’
I poked her jokingly. ‘Shut up, Winnie. Don’t tease me.’
She giggled again, then glanced at me seriously. ‘What do your parents think about your marrying Harry?’
‘They expected it.’
‘Yes, but are they happy with it?’
‘They love Harry.’
‘Yes, everyone loves Harry. But let’s face it, Judith. He isn’t much of a catch, doesn’t have many prospects. And fewer now because he’s mixed up with all those bolshies. Doesn’t it worry you that he may never get a steady job?’
‘I’m not marrying a prospect, Winnie. I’m marrying someone I love. He has his band and we’ll always have his piano playing.’
She sighed and said, sententiously, ‘Love doesn’t pay the bills.’
This is just what I’d heard my father remark, quietly to my mother, when he thought I couldn’t hear.
‘I’ll pay the bills,’ I asserted. ‘It doesn’t matter which of us brings in the bacon.’
‘You probably will have to, Judith.’
‘It’s not like you to be so cynical, Winnie. You’ve always been so romantic.’
‘Not really. At heart I’m a practical shop-keeper’s daughter and this depression has taught me a lot about reality.’
‘And you’re afraid that I’ve lost both my heart and my sense of reality?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’d have me refuse Harry because of what might happen in the future?’
She looked unhappy. ‘I don’t know.’
I hugged her. ‘I couldn’t do that, Winnie.’
‘No,’ she said, resignedly. ‘I can see that. It would be quite impossible for you to do that.’
‘Yes, quite impossible.’
We found a dress I loved. It was turquoise and rayon as I had planned, with a nipped-in waist and a full flowing graceful skirt. I also found a natural straw hat, decorated with a matching turquoise ribbon. Summer gloves and a pair of new black shoes and I was set.
‘You know, Winnie, this turquoise is the exact colour of one of the marbles you threw at the policeman.’
‘Heavens, Judith, don’t go remembering all that.’
‘It’s hard to forget. It was just one marble and it stuck in the horse’s mane and trickled down its neck. It was this blue.’
She shuddered. ‘I thought he would kill you.’
‘So did I, Winnie. Thank you.’ She flushed and looked teary. ‘No, Winnie, please don’t cry.’
She laughed shakily. ‘A coat. Have you got a coat, Judith? It may be cold. Spring days are unpredictable.’
‘My old coat’ll have to do. I can’t afford a new coat.’
‘It might spoil the effect.’
‘I’ll hope for a warm day. And no, Winnie, I won’t search the second-hand shops.’ I didn’t tell her that my skin crawled at the idea of wearing someone else’s cast-off clothes. I’d rather go in rags.
We were lucky. It was a beautiful spring day for our wedding. The breeze was a little cool and I might have been more comfortable wearing my coat but for the occasion I preferred a few goose bumps on my arms.
We had decided on the Adelaide Registry Office. Harry’s mother had complained vaguely that a proper church wedding would be nice, more like a real marriage. She maundered on about her own wedding and how exquisite it had been and how she had worn a lace gown and veil and had three bridesmaids and at the memory of past happiness wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. Harry did his best to cheer her with promises that the Registry Office was very pleasant. He reminded her, perhaps unwisely, that things had changed since she married and we all had to be careful about money. We were all in a depression he said.
‘Well, dear,’ she was concerned. ‘If you are depressed about getting married you should call it off. Are you also depressed, Judith?’ And she looked anxiously from me to Harry.
‘Not a bit,’ I said and grinned at her.
‘There, Harry,’ she reproached. ‘Judith isn’t depressed, so you should cheer up. No woman wants a depressed husband.’
His mother, Winnie’s parents, Winnie, my parents and Miss Marie all attended the ceremony, which was brief. Harry was nervous and I hoped that Winnie’s father hadn’t given
him a ponderous lecture on responsibility.
When the Registrar asked him if he would take an oath of affirmation on the Bible Harry got confused and said yes.
We had decided not to swear on the Bible because communists didn’t believe in religion and I was indifferent to it. But in the confusion the Registrar ruled a large black line across the secular part of the marriage licence. He handed the Bible to Harry. ‘It’s unusual for people to object to taking the oath but these days it happens and I have to ask.’
Since Harry had taken the oath and that large black line looked so daunting I did similarly.
Later Harry said to me apologetically, ‘I couldn’t retract it, Judith. Did you mind?’
‘Not at all. It was really quite funny. Your uncle and aunt looked so bemused. They thought we were heathens to get married in the Registry Office anyway.’
Afterwards we all returned to our new house. My mother had made the best cake she could with the ingredients available to her. I had asked Miss Marie to bring her nasturtium-leaf sandwiches and she arrived with a huge box of chocolates. Winnie’s mother contributed a box of delicacies, some ham, cheese, dried biscuits, fruit, and two bottles of white wine from the Barossa Valley.
For a wedding present my mother and father gave us their piano. When the carriers had brought it a week before, Harry had been speechless. Crimson with joy, he opened the lid with shaking hands and reverently played a few notes. ‘Now,’ he had breathed, ‘I’ll learn to read music and play something really worthwhile. It deserves the very best. My own piano. I never dared dream.’ I had secretly contributed money to having it tuned and I shared my parents’ happiness in his awed delight.
Miss Marie gave us a hand-painted tea set. She must have worked for months on its intricate flower design. Winnie’s family gave us a cheque for 200 pounds. It was twice the amount Joe had left me and I had eked out that money for years. Glowing with pleasure, I kissed and thanked them both. What could Harry and I do with 200 pounds? I had once boasted to him that we could live like kings on two pounds a week and now we had before us the magical possibility of living like kings for two years. I need no longer lie awake at night worrying about the success of my cartoons. Whatever they brought in would be a bonus. Marriage, I decided, draining the last dregs of wine from my glass, was a very happy state.
Harry sat opposite me at our own little kitchen table, staring at the cheque and looking thoughtful.
‘Isn’t it marvellous, Harry? Blessings on your uncle. Now we can live like kings for two whole years and after that there’ll probably be no depression, you’ll have a job and I’ll be a successful cartoonist.’
What with the wine and our good fortune I floated in a euphoric pool of well-being and a belief that now anything in our lives was possible. He continued to finger the cheque, unresponsive to my enthusiasm.
‘What’s the matter, Harry? Are you concerned that your uncle couldn’t afford it? Is there something I don’t know about Winnie’s family? Something you’re hiding? We could give some to your mother.’
Now I was anxious, guilty to be so overjoyed by our good fortune.
He laughed awkwardly. ‘No, darling, I was only thinking. It’s nothing.’
‘We ought to talk about “nothing”. You are worried about something.’
‘Not at all.’ He jumped up. ‘How about a tune?’ and with a sort of strange desperate defiance he lifted the lid and plunged into ‘If you knew Susie like I know Susie’. Puzzled, I cleared the table. It was now quite late. After eating we had all had a sing-song around the piano, Harry revelling in the company and the music.
‘We should think about turning in, Harry,’ I said casually. Perhaps this was what was worrying him.
I went to have a wash and put on my best nightie. When I returned to the bedroom he had changed into his pyjamas and was propped up in bed waiting for me.
‘Shall I put out the light?’ I asked.
‘No. I want to talk to you, Judith.’
‘Yes.’ I jumped into bed beside him. ‘Fire away. Spit it out. I’m listening.’
I cuddled up to him. I was relieved. Now, perhaps, I would hear what had worried him. It couldn’t be all that serious. I waited.
He fumbled for words. At last he got it out and it would have been better if he had remained silent.
‘Judith, I want to give some of that two hundred pounds to the Communist Party.’
All the breath sucked out of my body. ‘You what?’ I was surprised that I could speak and that my words were so steady and cool.
‘I want to give some of the two hundred pounds to the Communist Party.’ But he wouldn’t look at me.
‘No!’ I said, so violently that I even surprised myself. ‘No!’
I pulled away from him and he cringed. He reached out a hand to me. I shoved it aside and he flinched.
‘Half of it is mine.’ He was surly. ‘You can have a hundred pounds and I can have a hundred. That’s fair. And I can do with my share whatever I like. We’re supposed to donate to the Party. How else can it keep going? And I’m ashamed because I never have anything to give.’
‘And you’ve nothing now.’ My voice was tight and furious. ‘We have to help your mother and my parents and we have to live. You give your hundred away and then we have to live on mine.’
‘I don’t plan to give it all away, Judith, just …’
‘I don’t want to know about “just”. You’re not giving one penny to the Communist Party.’
Beside myself with rage and a sense of betrayal, I threw back the bedclothes, sprang out of bed, and stood trembling on the bare floor.
‘Look at me, Harry!’ But he refused.
I could hear myself, strident, screeching. I knew that I should stop, be quiet and reasonable, discuss whatever Harry wanted, but I was seized both by disappointment and panic. I knew that Harry had joined the Communist Party and that he admired Nathan. I had even jibed, ‘Simon says,’ when he repeated Nathan’s dictums. And Harry had always side-stepped my comments with his: ‘A socialist state will pay me to dance, Judith.’ It had all seemed light-hearted, but now it wasn’t. It was a serious intrusion into our newly married life and I wasn’t prepared for it.
Bugger Nathan, I thought. This was his doing. His and his two poisonous sisters. ‘Let’s get this clear, Harry. Our money is our money. We don’t halve it so you can throw yours away uselessly and then live on mine. We share everything and decide together what’s important. If you don’t want that then we have no marriage.’
I stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Shaking with fury, I pulled the hanging switch for the light in my workroom. It was only a pale yellow effulgence. Feverishly I dragged some pages of unfinished cartoons and drawings from the press, plonked them on the table, picked up my pencil, and prepared to work. If Harry was going to give our money away, then I’d better start supporting us in earnest. But, of course, I couldn’t work. I just sat there, shivering with distress.
Half an hour later Harry found me. ‘Judith,’ he whispered from the doorway, ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t imagine what a fool I’ve been. Of course you’re right. Please, Judith, forgive me. I’ve always been an irresponsible idiot but I’ll try to do better.’
He came to my side and stroked my hair. I stiffened. He bent and kissed the nape of my neck. ‘Please, darling, come back to bed.’
‘And you won’t give our money away?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Never?’
‘No, never. I promise.’
He put his arms about me and sang softly, ‘What’ll I do when skies are blue and you’re not here, what’ll I do?’
‘Don’t, Harry,’ I said wearily. ‘Please don’t always sing that song. Sometimes it makes me sad.’
‘And I’ve given you enough sadness for tonight.’
He pulled me to my feet and cradled me. ‘There,’ he said. He had come in without his pyjama top and his skin was smooth and creamy. I touched it and
found it warm. He looked down at me. My nightie had slipped off my shoulder and he bent and kissed my breast.
‘You’re so beautiful, Judith.’
And as his body was warm and urgent against mine I recalled the Indian boys leaping into the sea, and laughing Ganesh with his cotton garments clinging about the little knob between his thighs, and Joe Pulham’s reluctance to explain to me about Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. ‘Not yet, Nearly-Twelve,’ he had apologised. ‘When you are older.’ Now I thought with secret amusement I could say to Joe, there’s no need to explain anything to me. I’m no longer Nearly-Twelve and I’ve discovered it all myself.
The following day our happiness of the previous night was tinged with a little constraint. Neither of us could completely put aside our dreadful row. I felt ashamed to have been so harsh. Harry, I knew, felt a degree of resentment. I made us some breakfast and we were awkward with each other. We had been friends for years. We had shared happy experiences and some terrible ones but today it seemed that we were strangers, meeting for the first time. The night’s events had made us closer but at the same time more distant, plunging us into a foreign country where we were wary of the unfamiliar language and its hidden meanings. Expectations, once casual, were now entangled in intimacy; stronger, yet at the same time, more fragile.
I had strolled confidently into marriage, expecting only a continuation of what was familiar. Now I knew it to be a state more complex, more delicate and more easily broken.
I looked across the table at Harry. Seemingly he was absorbed in his porridge but his eating was automatic and his face so usually merry and confident looked sober, even worried.
‘If you haven’t any plans for today, Judith,’ he said cautiously, ‘I should go to the Labour Exchange and see if there is any work.’
Immediately, with a rush of guilt, I knew that he was doing this because I had shouted about money. I didn’t know how to handle this. ‘We should be together for the day,’ I mumbled. It was another lovely sunny morning.
‘We could go in to Adelaide perhaps. Stroll through the gardens. Or to the Semaphore. Take tea at the pavilion. We could go out,’ I said humbly.
He looked at me gratefully. ‘You’d like that?’