by Wendy Scarfe
When he returned breakfast was in full swing and Nathan and Jock had appeared. Bernie had returned to Mildura with the two blokes who had come in the tin lizzie.
‘What did they want, Harry?’ I asked.
He hesitated and glanced at Nathan as if for approval in telling me.
I was sharp as I so often was when I felt Nathan’s influence shadowing us. ‘What did they want, Harry?’
‘They want us to help set up a branch of the Communist Party.’
‘But you came here to do that. It isn’t a surprise, is it?’
‘No, not entirely.’
‘What do you mean “not entirely”?’
He hesitated again, throwing a how-much-do-I-tell-her look at Nathan, and then said, ‘It won’t be as easy as we thought. That’s all, Jude.’
After breakfast Harry told Nathan bluntly that we wouldn’t sleep here another night and that he could cough up enough funds for our hotel accommodation. Nathan demurred and grew sulky, saying that Harry came to do a job and that the Party was short of money. After all, it was only for a few nights.
Harry was belligerent. ‘It’s your mistake, Nathan. You fix it.’
Once again I interrupted their dispute. ‘Let’s go into town and see if they’ve got any mosquito netting and we can look at the pub. But it’s not too bad here, Harry.’
‘Not too bad?’ He looked stunned. ‘Not too bad, Jude? It’s dreadful. Two camp stretchers, an earth lavatory, and the river to wash in?’
‘Yes,’ I responded dreamily, recalling my morning swim and my bacon and eggs. ‘Quite lovely, actually. And the whole place smells of eucalypts. And the sweet smoky fragrance of burning wood from the fireplace. And the birds in the morning are glorious.’
Harry was speechless and Nathan smirked. For that I could have smacked him. He deserved a reminder of how far he could stretch my endurance. ‘But if there are no mosquito nets, then it’ll have to be the pub,’ I snapped at him.
This compromise didn’t appeal to Harry. ‘I want a proper room, Jude, and a proper bed. This place isn’t right for you.’
But I didn’t mind it as much as Harry did. Harry had grown up in a genteel house in Adelaide. I had been reared on a hulk. A hulk wasn’t a telegraph men’s camp but maybe it had prepared me for more adventurous accommodation. ‘Come on,’ I placated him, ‘let’s see what’s available.’
So Nathan drove us in to Mildura and parked in the main street. It was a sizeable, seemingly prosperous town with wide roads and shaded footpaths beneath overhanging verandahs. We found a general store that seemed to sell everything from clothing to hardware. Harry, still determined, said he’d go in search of a pub, and I could look for mosquito netting if I wanted to. He marched off, offended that I had seemingly rejected his care. His stiff back told me that he considered himself betrayed.
Nathan and Jock went off together, saying rather mysteriously that they wanted to meet a friend. It was a perfectly normal sunshiny morning with quite a few people busy about the street and I sighed at the continued secrecy of the Communist Party. Nathan always trailed a sense of conspiracy that seemed to create its own threat. I wished Harry were free of it.
I wandered through the store searching the shelves but eventually had to appeal to the shop owner. He led me to a shelf where there were rolls of green netting and asked me how much I wanted. Of course, I didn’t know. Helplessly, I said, ‘Enough to drape over two camp stretchers.’
He pursed his lips. ‘How you goin’ to do that?’
Once again I didn’t know. He looked me up and down. ‘From down south, are yer?’
‘Yes, Adelaide. Actually Port Adelaide.’
He assessed me. ‘Where yer stayin’?’
‘At a camp out of town. The telegraph men’s camp.’
‘Strange place for a lady to stay.’
I was defensive. ‘I’m with my husband.’
He smirked. ‘Husband, eh? What’s he do?’
I would have preferred not to answer but I was cornered between him and the shelf and I needed the netting. ‘He’s a musician.’
‘Plays in bands, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lookin’ for a gig?’
‘Yes.’
That seemed to satisfy him. ‘You’ll need some long bamboo poles to fix crosswise at each end of your stretcher and then you pull the nets over them. But you want made-up nets, not this stuff.’
He led me to another shelf. ‘How many do you want?’
I hesitated. Should I say two or four? ‘Four,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Other band members?’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Play yourself?’
I allowed myself to be confiding. ‘No, I’m tone deaf.’
He looked me over. ‘I’m sure you’ve got other assets.’
I ignored his leer.
‘Better watch yer step out there.’
‘Snakes?’ I asked.
‘Yair. Two legged ones. A lotta red raggers camp out there.’
‘Really?’ I pretended shock.
‘Yair. Regular commie bunch. Red raggers. We don’t care for them much in this town and we know how to deal with them.’
My hackles rose but I didn’t look up from counting out my money.
‘What do you do to them?’ I continued to search in my purse.
He snorted. ‘Whatta we do with them? Shove ‘em on the first train outer town or throw ‘em in the river. After we’ve roughed ‘em up a bit. Just to stop ‘em from comin’ back. That gets rid of ‘em. Good riddance to bad rubbish I says.’
He dusted his hands. ‘Don’t want that sorta riff-raff here. You and your musician husband …’ he leered at me again. ‘You take care out there. You don’t wanna get mistook for a red ragger.’
I took the nets and hurried out, knowing that his eyes followed me to the door.
Harry was waiting gloomily by the car. He noted my flushed face. ‘All OK, Jude?’
‘No.’ My voice was tight. ‘I’ve got the nets but I’ve just had a conversation with the most sickeningly abominable man. I don’t know how I kept a still tongue in my head. This is not a safe place, Harry.’
‘No?’ he jibed at me. ‘But only a short time ago you told me it was quite lovely.’
I was impatient. ‘Don’t be spiteful, Harry. I wasn’t talking about people.’
He relented. ‘No, you weren’t. The bloke in the pub wasn’t friendly, either. Quizzed me within an inch of my life. And advised me not to associate with the red raggers at the telegraph camp or I might end up dead in the river one night. How’s that for hospitality, Jude?’
I had a lazy day at the camp reading a book and sketching the red gums by the river. Bernie arrived later in the afternoon and he, Harry, Jock and Nathan spent the hours conferring while Nathan took notes. We had purchased some food in town and I left the men to muck around preparing it but none of our group was very adept at camp cooking so Andy did most of the work and didn’t seem to mind.
As darkness approached Harry sat down beside me anxiously. ‘I’m worried, Jude, and don’t know what to do.’
‘Why?’
‘We have a meeting in town tonight.’
‘Yes, but you expected this.’
He grasped my hand and held it tightly. ‘I don’t like it, Jude. I think this is a nasty town.’
‘But we’re not in town, Harry. We’re out at the camp.’
‘But I don’t know whether it’s safe, Jude. I can’t leave you here tonight on your own and I don’t like to take you with us. There could be trouble.’
He still clasped my hand so I squeezed his. ‘Don’t be silly, Harry. We’ve met trouble before. It’ll be simpler if I come with you and then you can keep an eye on me.’
He groaned. ‘A choice between Scylla and Charybdis.’
I laughed. ‘Honestly, Harry, that’s far too dramatic. It’s only a meeting. You’re making too much of a few threats from some loud-mouthed roughnecks.
What are they going to do? Shoot us up? It isn’t the Wild West.’
But he was silent. At last he said, ‘I need to go to the meeting, Jude. It’s expected.’
‘Of course it is. Stop worrying. You don’t want me to stay here, although I’m sure I’d be quite safe with Andy, so I’ll come with you.’
His response was strangely violent. ‘There’s no way I’m going to leave you here, hoping someone else will look after you.’
So that’s it, I thought. Nathan has been needling him, trying to persuade him to leave me at the camp.
‘Well, then,’ I said quietly, ‘if you feel like that it’s far better if I come.’
I had no idea what he said to Nathan and Jock that evening but they each greeted me pleasantly as I got into Pat’s car. Bernie, who had stayed to eat with us, again squeezed into the back between Harry and me. At the end of the track we turned towards Mildura and he directed us through now quiet streets to a small wooden house with an iron roof. It was set back from the road amidst some straggly dried-up shrubs.
No light showed from the windows so I was startled to enter and find a well-lit room with a dozen men. A couple sat at a central table, the others ranged around the walls. I hadn’t been able to see any lights because heavy blinds and some rigged-up dark sheeting shrouded the two windows. There was an eerie claustrophobia about the room that made me uneasy. Instinctively I looked back to the door as an escape route.
At my entrance a train of startled glances ran around the room. Then, as one, they stood and raised their hats to me. Overcome with embarrassment, I halted.
Nathan was impatient. ‘Sit down everyone.’ And he waved his hand around the room. ‘It’s Judith, Harry’s wife. We had to bring her.’
‘Rude bastard,’ Harry snarled in my ear, his comment thankfully lost in the murmurs of greeting.
Extra chairs were found for us and I drew mine into a corner where I could sit as inconspicuously as possible. Nathan appropriated a chair at the table and laid out all his material. Jock, meanwhile, was full of conviviality. He shook hands, asked names, quipped and joked. Harry stood irresolutely beside Nathan, thoughtfully watching Jock. After a moment he spoke to Nathan who briefly looked up at him, then at Jock, who was deep in conversation with one of the Mildura men. Nathan’s glance was short and uninterested before he returned to his papers. It reminded me of his earlier visits to the Chew It, where, embedded in his book, he had no awareness of me or the people around him. How, I wondered, did he ever hope to persuade anyone to agree with him.
He grew restless. It was clear he wanted to start the meeting. He took up one of his papers, showing no sign of introducing himself nor of speaking words of greeting or thanks. Jock was quick and fully aware of his ineptness.
Before Nathan could launch into his prepared speech, Jock took over. He spoke briefly of his impoverished childhood in Glasgow, his hard life in the ship-building yards and the struggles of unionists. His message was simple: united we stand, divided we fall. This his audience knew or they wouldn’t have been secretly at this house in the middle of the night. They grimaced at some of his story, shook their heads, and finally nodded wisely in agreement. Jock, by his understanding, held them in the palm of his hand.
Nathan lost them. He droned on about Marxist economics and the role and importance of the industrial proletariat. At first they listened courteously and then finally with impatience. At last one of them could endure the lecturing no longer.
‘Look, mate,’ he said, ‘you come here to a farming place and talk to us about the industrial proletariat changing the world. Do you see a lot of industrial proletariat around here? We’re fruit pickers, mate, and poor farmers. I’ve read a bit of your Marx and Lenin. Which one of them was it that called the peasants ‘ignorant dolts’? Well, mate, he got it wrong and so have you. We want a say in how we run things, not some bloke from the Central Committee ordering us about.’
Nathan was squashed. He had no redress. He wasn’t flexible in his thinking and that was his trouble. He sat down and his glance at Jock appealed for rescue. But even as Jock opened his mouth we heard cars rocketing down the road outside and a voice blaring through a megaphone. One of the men leaped to his feet and immediately doused the lights. I had never liked complete darkness. Out of it always emerged those furtive shadows, figures of undefined and therefore terrifying evil. My heart accelerated and if I had known where the door was I would have leaped to it and dashed outside.
I felt around me and called Harry’s name but the noise from outside drowned my voice. A scream rose in my throat.
‘Ssh, girlie, ssh,’ a voice hissed beside me. ‘Ssh.’
Terrified I bit my tongue, shut in the cage of my own silence. The noise outside escalated. Now chanting, bawling voices abused and threatened us, clamouring for red raggers to get out of town or they’d be chucked out. A barrage of rocks bombarded the iron roof. Glass splintered in a window and a thunderous deluge of sound went on and on. A hoarse voice sang through the megaphone, ‘Run rabbit run.’
I covered my ears and shrank in my chair. This was worse than a police baton charge. In the Port the community didn’t hate us.
At last they left. After they had gone no one spoke or moved for some time, then someone put on the light and we all looked around. No one was hurt. Harry rushed to my side and enclosed me in his arms. I was shaking and immediately became the centre of attention. It was as if having a target for their concern deflected their fear and provided an outlet for their anger.
‘To do this to a woman,’ someone muttered.
‘But they didn’t know I was here,’ I said later to Harry.
‘I doubt whether it would have made any difference to those hoons, Judith.’
Back at the camp we made a cup of tea on a primus and discussed the events. Nathan was shocked, Jock furious, Harry tight-lipped, and Bernie continually flicked his throat with a pretended knife.
‘It’s the train for you tomorrow, Jude, and no argument,’ Harry said.
‘No. While you’ll stay I’ll stay. Go home and worry myself sick. Not likely.’
‘You’re a good girl, Judith,’ Jock said, ‘but Harry’s right. We can’t do the job while you’re here.’
I rounded on him. ‘Bugger your job. Mind your own business. And you, too, Nathan. And don’t either of you dare tell me what I can or can’t do. I’m not going on the train and that’s flat.’
Bernie smiled at me sweetly. ‘Lovely Judith,’ he crooned. ‘I knew a girl in Italia … just like …’ and he became dreamy.
Diverted, I said, ‘Did you, Bernie? What happened?’
He didn’t answer but I guessed. He had fled and left her behind. How little I really understood about dear Bernie and his life.
Harry looked miserable.
‘You’re not going to be some sort of sacrifice, Harry, not for a set of ideas.’
‘Ideals, Jude,’ he said unhappily, ‘not ideas.’
‘It’s the same thing. Pie in the sky.’
He sighed, defeated, and looking at him I felt awful. I couldn’t go on the train and leave him to be injured in some political brawl but in refusing to go I had somehow deprived him of something important to his manhood. It was all too much for me and I did what I usually scorned: I burst into sobs of distress. And it was all muddled up with Harry’s and my dream of a honeymoon and the beauty of the river and the burly timeless eucalypts and the birds at dawn and the gentle water on my skin.
I sobbed pathetically as Harry helped me to put on my pyjamas. Then he squeezed onto the stretcher beside me and held me tenderly. ‘Don’t weep so, darling. We’ll both go home tomorrow.’ But I knew that I exploited his love and was blackmailing him into a decision he hated and I cried even harder.
He continued to try to soothe me and the warmth of his body against mine was a comfort, but neither of us thought of lovemaking: I, because I was too distraught, he because his thoughts were troubled. In an emotional trap of my own making, I eventually hiccup
ed myself to sleep.
The emotional turbulence of the night before left its scars on us all. Next morning Harry was so withdrawn Nathan glanced at him warily and Jock being overly cheerful did not help. Andy served us breakfast breezily. He looked us over with amusement. ‘Shock, eh? Didn’t expect it?’
As the three men remained silent I replied, ‘Yes and no.’
‘Forget it,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Happens all the time. One of our blokes got chucked in the river. He’d been giving out some pamphlets about a union meeting. Not even Communist Party stuff. They roughed him up and pitched him in the Murray. Broke his nose. Luckily we were there to pull him out. Poor bastard, coughing up blood and water. Nearly drowned.’
He slapped a piece of bacon on my plate.
‘Another time they grabbed one of the pickers and flung him on a goods train bound for Melbourne. He had a wife and kid here so he jumped off and walked back. Collected his family and high-tailed it out on the next train. Reckon he’d had enough. Right scared he was. Then, of course, commitments weaken a man. He had a wife and kid.’
I flinched and poked the bacon around on my plate. My egg had congealed. Was that what I was to Harry? A commitment that weakened him? I had always believed, perhaps wrongly, that we gave each other strength. I tried to think rationally. Was this sort of violence really any different from the police beatings at the Port or the wars between scabs and unionists? Why did I feel it was? Why did I feel that a menace hung over this town?
But Nathan wasn’t sensitive to nuances. Andy’s stories frightened me but they seemed no more than water off a duck’s back to him. He finished his plate of eggs and bacon, scraped it clean with a piece of toast, drank his mug of tea, and put plate and mug neatly beside him on the ground.
‘I’ll wash those later,’ he said to Andy.
He had been punctilious in doing his share of the jobs. He polished his glasses with a clean handkerchief and then looked up at us all. The morning sun caught his spectacles and for an instant the light dazzled across the lenses so that it was impossible to see his eyes.
‘While we drove around yesterday,’ he said, ‘I took careful note of where we might hold our street meeting. There’s a store on the corner of two of the main streets and it has a large plate-glass window. Jock, you can speak from a platform in front of the window and that should prevent any missiles or attacks. I’m certain the store owner would be most unhappy to lose such an expensive piece of glass. He’s doubtless influential in this town.’