by Wendy Scarfe
‘Yes.’ I smiled at him lovingly. ‘We can’t afford a honeymoon.’ I stopped, confused. Here I was talking about money again.
But he rescued me. ‘No,’ he was firm. ‘We can’t. No one can these days. But we can go out. Put on your best dress, darling. Where will we go? I’m at your service, ma’am,’ and he jumped up and bowed to me with a grin.
‘Oh, Harry, you …’ I laughed. He hugged me.
I put on my wedding dress once more and my pretty hat and we caught the tram to the Semaphore. At a little cafe overlooking the beach we ordered tea and cakes. It was low tide and the sea had receded leaving pale green threads of water between mauve sand banks. How tranquil it was. Why had I no longings to be a painter? Why did I choose to always comment on the turbulence of political life, which in the end was more ephemeral than this?
Thousands of us, not only from the Port but from all over Adelaide and its surrounds, joined the march of protest against the removal of beef from the food rations. Later it came to be known as the Beef March, but I called it the Hunger March. Harry agreed. He said that to call it a hunger march described it accurately and united us with all the other poor starving sods in England and Europe taking to the streets.
It was eight miles from the Port to Treasury Place in Adelaide. All along the route police harassed us: for walking on the tram lines or train lines, for obstructing the traffic. When they diverted us onto footpaths they pestered us for causing congestion and inconvenience to the general public.
We ignored their petty irritations and complied with instructions. We gritted our teeth and refused to be provoked into reprisals. However we persisted in shouting our slogan from the Free Speech Movement: THE STREETS BELONG TO THE WORKERS and WORK OR FULL-MAINTENANCE.
By the time our Port contingent arrived in Adelaide the roads leading to Treasury Place were overflowing. It was both inspiring and dispiriting to see such a show of strength but know it was strength derived from desperation—so many battles behind us, so little hope or expectation for the future.
From the back of the crowd we could neither see nor hear the speakers. I think there were several Labor Party politicians, probably, as my father growled, trying to gain mileage for their electoral hopes. In reality they never offered us more than anyone else. I thought bitterly of the spate of letters to the Despatch, particularly the one that expressed nastily the opinion that government should put an end to the ‘irritating exactions of meeting the cost of the dole’.
The crowd was becoming tired of trying to listen. Frustrated and exhausted by a long and seemingly fruitless march, they were ripe for immediate action, an outlet for their rage. I felt the wave of restlessness surge around me. Harry, who had shinned up a lamppost to see better, now dropped beside me.
‘There’s the usual contingents of mounted and foot police guarding the front of the Treasury building. I don’t like it, Judith.’ He glanced behind us. The crowd there was less packed in.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘quickly. Before we are trapped.’
He grasped my hand and we edged our way through the people behind us. They gave way. No one was interested in us. Their attention was directed towards the front of the march.
‘What’s happening?’ The urgent question was repeated over and over, but remained unanswered.
A couple of boys followed Harry’s example and climbed lampposts. From above some people leaned out of the windows of buildings. They were called to: ‘What’s happening?’
‘Looks like a fight,’ someone shouted.
Around us people started to sweep forward. Harry dragged me off the road to the footpath and we squeezed against the wall of a building, resisting the headlong rush until once again a space opened before us. We broke through into a quieter open street.
‘We’re not going to be beaten up again,’ Harry panted. ‘What is the point?’
It was sickening to think of another defeat for all these poor people and not be part of it, but Harry was right. To end up injured again would serve no purpose. And yet, what did serve any purpose?
I looked down at Harry’s hand holding mine. It was strong and comforting. ‘Oh, Harry,’ I wept, ‘it’s awful to be always defeated. Will it always be like this? It’s so unjust.’
We walked quietly and he continued to grip my hand. ‘I don’t know, Judith. I’d like to believe it isn’t so. The communists assert that these are the death throes of capitalism and that given another ten years it will collapse.’
Ten years, I thought. In terms of history this was nothing, a tiny dot on the map of time. Aristotle had written on moderation 2000 years ago but in my life span ten years seemed forever. How queer our personal measurement of time. So would we go on squeezing our lives through the narrow jaws of poverty for another ten years? And then what? A brighter future? A brighter communist future? It was a remote dream.
But not to Harry, it seemed. ‘Think, Judith,’ he said. ‘The Russian Revolution took place barely fourteen years ago and look what changes that has brought about. And now we are seeing a successful socialist alliance in Spain. It’ll be the second communist state in the world. You’ll see.’
I knew that the second Spanish republic was on the verge of coming to power. It was an alliance of several left-wing groups, including the communists, and its success would herald a victory over the powerful organs of the Catholic Church, the conservative conclave of rich landowners and the army. For the workers to defeat these mighty Goliaths through the ballot box would be a triumph reminiscent of the overthrow of the Russian state. No wonder Harry and his comrades had stars in their eyes.
As he spoke, his face flushed with enthusiasm, I realised that he really did envisage and believe in a socialist utopia. For Harry none of the contradictions of fallible humans sullied his great dream. To him it was like the rhapsody of a piece of music that leads inevitably to a great and satisfying resolution. And was I the poorer for my doubts? My cartoons were grounded not in some great faith but in a more savage awareness of what I saw as the gap between dream and reality.
As usual the police bashed up the marchers, a number of whom were jailed for defending themselves.
Winnie, of course, had seen our house while we were in the process of furnishing it, and later at our small wedding celebration. But now she bounced in asserting that she had come to really see it. ‘As it is lived in, so to speak.’
She brought a large bunch of flowers and immediately fussed around in the kitchen searching the cupboards for a vase. ‘You must have one, Judith. Everyone has vases.’
‘Use a milk bottle, Winnie. There’s one on the sink.’
She picked it up, looked at it distastefully, rinsed it, tried to arrange the flowers and failed. ‘Haven’t you got anything else?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Winnie, try the laundry.’
She went out and came back with a second bottle and a tin. She halved the bunch and arranged some of the flowers. ‘Scissors, Judith.’
I found them. She shortened the stems of the remainder of the flowers and arranged them in the tin. Then she looked around for a place to put them all. Finally, with a deep sigh, she gave up and left them all standing on the draining board.
I grinned at her. ‘I’m sorry my home is so inadequate, Winnie.’
She grinned back. ‘It’s like you, Judith.’
‘Not inadequate I hope?’
‘Of course not, silly. You know I didn’t mean that. I mean you just think about other things.’
‘I have geraniums.’ I pointed to a pot on the window ledge. ‘I like geraniums. They’re tough and Mum always kept a few on the hulk.’
Winnie perched on one of the kitchen chairs, her elbows on the table. ‘Wasn’t it Mrs Spicer in the Henry Lawson story who always kept geraniums? That was such a sad story. She had lots of children, I think. Do you and Harry plan to have children, Jude?’
‘Not yet. Some time in the future, probably.’
‘Not yet?’ She looked coy and I was tempted to sma
ck her. ‘How will you manage that?’
‘None of your business, Winnie.’
‘Just interested.’
‘No, Winnie, just curious.’
‘Aren’t they the same?’
‘No. You’re prying.’
She laughed. ‘And you’ve put me in my place.’
‘Nicely, I hope.’
‘Always, Jude. We’re old friends and now we’re family.’
I made her a cup of tea and put out some bread, cheese and apples. We munched companionably.
‘Speaking of marriage, Winnie, have you met anyone you liked?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘None of them has any money. And I’m not like you. I need to be supported. You know second-hand shops for my clothes were a great novelty at first, but now it’s worn off. I don’t want to do it forever. Courting isn’t much fun these days when I know the swain is penniless. I haven’t the slightest intention of being a Mrs Spicer. Harry’s also a bit of a bore these days, isn’t he? So earnest.’
I was affronted. ‘He’s certainly not a bore.’
She shrugged. ‘He used to be so full of fun, always joking and laughing, dancing and loving music. Marriage has sobered him, Jude.’
I was defensive. ‘It isn’t me. It’s the Communist Party.’
‘I thought it might be.’
‘They’re terribly serious, Winnie.’
‘Sort of believe in joy deferred.’
‘That’s hit the nail on the head.’
She looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe it’s only a short-lived enthusiasm. Harry always had intense but brief passions. Except in your case, of course. You’re not a brief passion.’
‘Thanks for the reassurance.’
She chuckled. ‘Don’t mention it. And I daresay that his devotion to the Communist Party will be as short lived as all his other enthusiasms.’
I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to believe that Harry couldn’t stick with anything. Although I also wished that he was a little more moderate I felt the need to defend his devotion. Steadiness, I thought.
‘He really does believe in their ideas, Winnie, and he is working for them. I think the experience in Victoria Square changed him. On the surface he has been the same ebullient Harry, but underneath he has always been searching for the why. Like it or not, the communists have given him an answer and a purpose.’
She took a bite of her apple. Her teeth were small and white and even. A writer of romances would have called them pearly. So were Harry’s. Those shining teeth made their mouths particularly attractive and their smiles healthy and young. So many children at the soup kitchen had blackened, broken and decaying teeth.
She munched thoughtfully, extracting with her fingernail a piece of apple skin from between her front teeth. She placed the piece on her plate and licked her fingers. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Judith. These days you know him better than I do but it doesn’t augur well for his future or yours.’
‘Winnie, you’re always harping on this theme. Our times are very uncertain. Harry and I have both given up thinking of the future, which I suppose is contradictory because the communists dwell all the time on what the future holds and Harry never stops talking about it.’
‘The great and glorious state?’ she grimaced.
‘Yes, and they take heart from every small triumph in Europe: at the minute the success of the Spanish republic in establishing a workers’ state.’
‘And they ignore every defeat or failure?’
She was right. Winnie had very little of what might be called a social or political conscience, but she had developed a fund of common sense and a down-to-earth grasp on what went on in politics.
I recalled the recent statement in the press about the evil threat of the Bolsheviks. They were ‘slyly and insidiously worming their way into the citadel of the labour movement in order to use its forces to preach violent class war, to take control of the unemployed, force demonstrations, foster discontent, and prepare a revolutionary situation’.
It had been savage, but Harry had found in it, not a warning of defeat but a hope of victory. He had been jubilant. ‘We’re winning, Judith. Every night when I go to a meeting of the Unemployed Workers’ Union and talk to them about communism they listen. I know we’re succeeding. Nathan’s right. Give us another ten years. You’ll see. If we weren’t effective they wouldn’t fear us. It’s wonderful to confront the conservative forces of capitalism. I feel like a soldier in the field, scenting victory.’
And Harry’s face had glowed with pride and a sense of achievement.
But I couldn’t explain any of this to Winnie for she was such a bread-and-butter girl.
Harry’s work in the Unemployed Workers’ Union was planned by the Communist Party. Nathan visited regularly, staggering in under a pile of books. Over the kitchen table he and Harry talked well into the night discussing Harry’s strategy of instruction. Harry assiduously took notes.
I retired to my work room at the front of the house but caught the occasional word. ‘Bourgeois’ was often repeated and ‘proletariat’ and ‘exploitation’ and, of course, ‘capitalism’. Nathan’s voice was now stronger than I would have expected from such a slight man. Harry told me, admiringly, that after his failure as a botanic park stump orator, Nathan had set himself the task of developing and training his voice. It couldn’t be called stentorian now, but it was robust and full-bodied.
To show Harry that I bore Nathan no ill will I usually made them supper. It amused me to see Nathan rock back in his chair, fold his hands across his stomach, and assume a parsonical manner. Though frequently overwhelmed by Nathan’s intellectual confidence, Harry retained his sense of humour. ‘They call him Einstein, Jude. Or The Professor.’
‘He’s not an old man,’ I said, ‘but he looks like one.’
He chuckled. ‘You know Jock, from the wilds of Glasgow? Nathan’s offsider? He says that Nathan’s eloquence never matches his sense of injustice. He’s too ponderous, long-winded and deadly serious. I was having a beer with Jock in the Newmarket pub the other afternoon. He’d had a couple too many, Jude. “You know, Harry,” he confided, “Nathan is a nine-carat left-winger but despite what the comrades joke about his eyes being whoppers behind his thick spectacles, they don’t stick out like a bulldog’s balls”.’
I shrieked with laughter. ‘Oh, Harry, did he really say that? And the comrades objected to my dogs cartoon.’
‘I’m sure Nathan thinks,’ Harry continued to laugh, ‘that all young people are in danger of being frivolous and a good dose of communism will educate them. I don’t think any of them have had much opportunity to be frivolous. They have usually carried the weight of families with an unemployed or absent father. I’m trying to form a group of young communists in the Unemployed Workers’ Union. Nathan calls it a cadre and the Communist Party aims to infiltrate lots of organisations and form similar ginger groups. He says mine will be ground-breaking. I’m to be given a Party name—Comrade Sullivan.’
‘What on earth for, Harry?’
‘I’m not quite sure. But I think it has something to do with the police not being able to identify us. We expect to be targeted very strongly by them as we progress.’
‘But, Harry, everyone in the Port knows who you are. Most know you are a communist. You sell copies of the Port Beacon on the streets. What is the point? Isn’t it rather silly? A bit extreme?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s Party policy.’
I looked at his notes lying on the table. ‘And what sort of things do you teach these frivolous young people? We’re not much older ourselves.’
He picked up a sheet of paper and read to me: ‘We are in the last stage of humanity’s march towards a classless society. Labourers will overcome capitalism and bring in a new society which has no classes. It is the capitalists of the world who are banded together against the working class.’
He looked at me eagerly. ‘They, too, are labourers, Jude. That is if they ever get work. They’ll be keen to bring in
a classless society.’
‘Oh, Harry,’ I said, ‘how is this received? Don’t they find it rather …’ I was going to say airy-fairy, but settled for ‘abstract?’
He looked deflated. ‘They do get bored pretty quickly.’
‘Yes,’ I said and avoided his eyes. In the face of his earnestness I couldn’t show him I was laughing. ‘What do you do then when they get bored?’
‘I give up and bring out my violin. We have a sing-along.’ He grinned. ‘They all know the words of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ and then there are Irish songs like ‘The Wearing of the Green’. Nathan was a bit taken aback when I told him what I did. The trouble, Jude, is that he doesn’t know when people have had enough talk.’
‘Perhaps he lacks a little moderation? Even judgement?’ I was cautious about making any critical comments about Nathan having found that Harry tended to take them personally. But now he only nodded wisely.
‘You’re quite right, darling.’
And I was comforted. My fear, that his belief in communism would entirely consume him, evaporated. He would believe, but not as Nathan wanted or expected. Nathan might go fishing for converts but just when he thought that Harry was safely in the net my husband would slip away, a bright sliver of inextinguishable light.
‘Oh, Harry,’ I said, ‘I do love you.’
‘And what part of me, ma’am, do you love the most?’
‘Well,’ I pretended to consider.
‘And while you’re deciding …’ He enveloped me in his arms and we didn’t clear the supper dishes away until the next morning.
I continued submitting my cartoons to the Workers’ Weekly, Spearhead and occasionally the Sun News Pictorial and I suppose that it was as a result of these that I received a letter from a magazine called Women Today. I noticed that it was published by the Forward Press, which also published the Workers’ Weekly. The editor, a Mrs Edna King, sent a warm courteous letter explaining that she had seen many examples of my cartoons in the papers and asking if I would be interested to contribute regularly to her new magazine. She was looking for ‘strong, independent, forward-thinking women who were politically aware but also interested in the everyday lives of women in the community’.