Hunger Town
Page 45
‘Thanks, Jude,’ she muttered, still concentrating on the road.
I watched her white intense face and felt miserably guilty to have involved her in this. She always pretended that it was an exciting adventure but I suspected this was another of her acts, a brave pretence.
Lately, I thought, I detected new lines on her pretty face that had always appeared so youthful. Were the pitiless demands of our journey ageing her? She had born the brunt of it all—the organisation, the exhausting driving, the emotional turmoil of hope and despair. If this journey were a dead end should we give up? Could I continue to impose so many burdens on her? At what point would we be forced to admit defeat?
The track seemed to narrow even further and then, surprisingly, there was a clearing ahead of us and Marie drove onto a small plateau. She relaxed her hands on the wheel and pulled over.
‘I think we may have arrived, Judith.’ She took some deep shaky breaths and some colour returned to her face.
In front of us was a village of the customary grey stone. Possibly a miners’ village although we saw no sign of pits or workings. ‘It’s very peaceful,’ I said, ‘and secluded.’
We got out of the car.
‘Very secluded and safe,’ she said. ‘I don’t see a convoy of military trucks grinding around that road.’
Women and children had come out. They stared at us in amazement. Two little boys whispered together and pointed at the Citroën. An old man approached us. The skin on his face was leathery and seamed and his hands were gnarled, the joints thickened by arthritis. He walked unhurriedly supporting himself with a rough knotted walking stick.
I smiled tentatively but received no warm response. I didn’t feel we were unwelcome, rather that we were being weighed up cautiously. We waited until he spoke to us.
‘Buenas tardes,’ he said.
‘Buenas tardes,’ Marie replied.
I had a sudden impulse to laugh at these careful courtesies. It was a bizarre situation: two strangers at the end of an inaccessible dirt road bidding good afternoon as if we had just dropped in on the neighbours for afternoon tea.
He was puzzled, even suspicious, and rightly so. We must indeed be a peculiar interruption in their lives. Finally he asked, ‘Are you lost?’
Marie rapidly translated for me. At her fluent Spanish he relaxed a little.
‘No,’ she said, ‘at least we hope not.’
He continued to look confused.
‘We have been sent by the doctor. To speak to someone named José.’
His surprise was brief and then concealed. ‘The good doctor?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘To find someone named José?’
‘Yes.’
Still he gave nothing away. ‘And why would you come all this way to speak to José?’
‘He may be able to help us.’
He was suspicious again. ‘I doubt if José could be of any assistance to two …’ he hesitated, ‘Englishwomen.’
But Marie persisted, ‘Yes, we believe he can and so does the good doctor. We are looking for someone.’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Are you José?’
Her question was blunt. How would he react?
He inclined his head.
‘My friend here,’ she indicated me and still translating for my benefit, ‘my friend here has lost her husband.’
A shutter fell over his face. ‘Why would I know anything about your friend’s husband. Husbands often go missing. Another woman, perhaps.’
But Marie wasn’t to be put off. ‘No. Not this one,’ she said.
I caught the word Grenville.
‘Mrs Grenville is looking for her husband.’ she repeated.
He shook his head and all my previous disappointments were mere shadows beside the reality of this one.
He spoke again to Marie and I recognised the word Inglés.
Marie replied quickly in Spanish and I knew she explained that my husband was Australian and that we were not English.
‘Austrian,’ he said.
‘No. Australian,’ she corrected.
‘Australiano?’ The word lingered on his tongue while he thought. Then he smiled at us for the first time. ‘Ah, Australiano,’ he said. ‘So far away.’
She nodded.
For some reason our coming from so far away seemed to reassure him and he spoke volubly and quickly.
He repeated the word Inglés several times and once waved his hand towards the end of the village.
She turned to me disheartened, apologetic for my disappointment. ‘He says there is a young Englishman resting in the barn at the end of the village. He has a British passport. He was wounded in a street battle. The good doctor has healed him and they have brought him down from the mountains because of the winter cold. He asks if we could speak with him.’
I felt exhausted and cruelly indifferent to the plight of some unknown Englishman. He had probably been as foolhardy as Harry. Then I recalled the dead boy crucified in a shaft of sunlight and the insolent indifference of the soldiers who shot him. In confronting such evil and deciding whose side he was on, had Harry really been foolhardy or had he been incredibly brave?
Wearily I supposed that we should meet this young Englishman. Perhaps we could help him in some way—take a letter for him, alert someone as to his whereabouts. I thought it unlikely but maybe he had met Harry in the street battle. Maybe he knew something of Harry’s whereabouts. Maybe, maybe. I was sick of the word maybe: its slimy half-promise that always deceived.
My better self agreed to visit him. I could only hope that someone somewhere was similarly showing compassion to Harry.
‘Are you happy to go to see him, Judith? You never know.’
‘Of course. What else can we do?’
José had listened attentively to our conversation, straining in a vain attempt to comprehend. Now he looked at me sharply. ‘Judith?’ he inquired.
‘Yes. My name is Judith. Judith Grenville. Judith Larsen.’ I felt impatient. Marie had told him my name. But perhaps even in this remote spot someone had seen my cartoons. If it endangered me, too bad.
He spoke again, this time directly to me, in halting English. ‘You are Judith Card?’ There was an urgent insistence in his question.
Marie looked at him blankly. ‘Judith Card? No. Judith Gren …’
He interrupted her, his old face wrinkling in a beaming smile. And in careful rehearsed English he said very slowly, ‘Judith, she is such a card.’
The breath rushed from my body and the world catapulted around. I was aware of Marie’s face blazing with excitement.
‘The barn,’ I gasped. ‘Marie, it’s Harry.’
‘I’ll show …’ José started to say, but he was too late. I was running, shouting something unintelligible. The women clustered on the road parted to let me through, their faces astonished. I was stumbling on the broken earth track, running, hurtling towards the barn at the end of the village.
Acknowledgements
For this elegant publication of my novel I wish to thank at Wakefield Press Michael Bollen, Julia Beaven, my editor, for her courteous consideration, helpful advice and artistic production skills, Angela Tolley, Margot Lloyd and Michael Deves—and Stacey Zass for her cover design.
My thanks are also due to those who read my manuscript and offered me generous encouragement: Nalini Scarfe, Hilary Endacott, Bill McIntyre, Jeff and Jo Keith. I am especially indebted to Dr Heather Goodall, Professor of History, UTS, and Michaelie Clark who not only read my manuscript but endorsed it with unsolicited recommendations.
I am indebted to Meredith Blundell at the Port Adelaide Library and Moana Colmer and Andrew Peters at Natrail Museum for their research assistance.
To my husband Allan whose unfailing enthusiasm and assistance made Hunger Town possible, my deepest gratitude.
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