Hunger Town (2 page)

Years later a family friend said to me, ‘Your mother and father had a tempestuous marriage when they were young.' I was puzzled. It had seemed a normal marriage to me. Then my viewpoint shifted and I saw my parents from a distance, the detached observer. ‘Yes,' I said, ‘I guess you are right. That explains a lot.' But even then I was not certain what I meant by ‘a lot'.

My father and I walked to the Working Men's Club. He always took my hand when we crossed the rail lines, weaving along the bitumen apron that fronted the docks. The rail lines weren't bumpy and I didn't trip but the huge warehouses that loomed over us threw impenetrable shadows far darker than the night. These made me nervous. I was comforted to have the strength of his hand.

The Working Men's Club was a noisy place. I had imagined that a place of education would be hushed and serious. Many of the workers or the unemployed who came there had been soldiers in the Great War. Although demobbed some years ago they were still rowdy and ribald and, although years older than I was, had a youthful iconoclastic zest for life. I wondered later if having been deprived of their youth they constantly sought to relive it and reclaim it. There was a bar with plenty of beer and a smoking room rarely used. The whole building had a blue misty cigarette haze and smelled of warm sweaty clothes, tobacco and yeasty staleness.

I was the centre of attention. They called me ‘a pint-sized socialist' and roared with laughter. I was pleased but embarrassed when they spoke about me over my head. They vied with each other to teach me ribald songs and urged me to join in while they sang ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres'. They were kind to me in small ways: they competed with each other to find me a chair and sat me upon it as if it were a throne. Then they would buy me lemonade and watch me drink.

Sometimes one of them would wink at me, ‘You won't be drinking lemonade for much longer.'

‘Yes,' I asserted, ‘I will. My mother does.'

They treated this remark as a huge joke, roared with laughter again, and slapped their thighs.

It seemed someone was always winking at me and laughing at some secret amusement.

‘Why do they always wink at me?' I asked my father.

‘It's their way.'

And as I continued to look puzzled, ‘They're a good bunch. It's tough being a working man and a returned soldier.'

Not all the men at the Club joked and winked at me. One man sat apart in a corner of the room. He was skeletal thin and the bones of his skull formed hard ridges on which a little hair sprouted. He sat with downcast eyes and his lips mumbled unintelligible words as he wrung his hands.

Sometimes someone took him a glass of beer, put it in his hand, folded his fingers about the glass and, before he could slackly drop it, helped him lift it to his mouth. Once he looked at his helper and large tears started from his eyes, ran down his cheeks and he sobbed. On another occasion someone kindly touched his shoulder but he leapt up and screamed, ‘Quick, boys, it's coming! Gas!' and he fumbled frantically at his body. Finding nothing there he screamed again.

Several men gently took his arms and spoke softly to him. They tried to ease him out of the room but at the door he fought them off. ‘I won't go back,' he sobbed. ‘I won't.'

My father's friend Frank saw me watching and came to my side. He was a bluff Irishman. ‘Don't be upset, darlin',' he said, ‘or afraid. He's only someone's poor bastard of a son wrecked by the war. You can't send a man to hell and expect him to come home sane. The war's done for him. He's harmless. Just always scared.'

His explanation didn't make things any clearer to me. The war had no reality for me but I was ashamed to have been seen watching. It was as if a skin had been peeled back from this weeping man revealing something too painful for my eyes.

My father didn't know what I had seen and I never told him or my mother. When I returned to the hulk I drew a picture of the man and placed it with other drawings in a special box. When I drew things that upset me I didn't feel so sad.

I didn't mind the lectures that took place in a big room of the Working Men's Club. Words fascinated me and the words I heard there were different from the words spoken at home. It struck me that maybe words belonged in families and lived in particular places: Marxism, Lenin, socialism, revolution, capitalism, unions, were words that belonged in the Club. Nobody there complained about them but when I mentioned them to my mother she closed her mouth firmly and said, ‘You're too young to understand that sort of thing. I don't want you to use those words.'

‘Why not?' My father was belligerent.

‘They'll get her into trouble.'

‘What trouble? Shouldn't she learn?'

‘I'm not interested in your theories, your big man's dreams. I know plenty of women who'd like to put more food on the table now, not in some pie-in-the-sky future. I don't want her head stuffed full of unreal fantasies.'

But I continued to enjoy the songs beefed out at the meetings and without understanding the passion caught something of the fervour and was excited by the song about the red flag died with the blood of workers. The nobility of its sentiment of sacrifice engulfed me.

My mother must have convinced my father that it was all beyond my comprehension for, as a sop to her, he allowed me to take some pencils and paper so that I might occupy myself while he argued with his friends. Surrounded by faces, I amused myself drawing them and I later added my sketches to the collection I kept in my drawer. On those occasions I first experienced the joy of privacy. Although I was encircled by people they demanded nothing of me. To be apart but happily occupied is not loneliness. Many of the men were poorly dressed. My mother was forever washing and ironing and even my father's work clothes were clean and mended. But many of these men wore old shirts with ragged stained collars and button-less threadbare coats. Once I heard a rustle of paper and saw one surreptitiously pick up a newspaper left on a chair and quickly stuff it down inside his shirt. I couldn't imagine why he wanted to steal a newspaper. As I looked he caught my eye but he didn't wink, in fact he reminded me of the swimmer with the piece of bread. Instead he turned a deep red, hurriedly got up and shuffled away.

‘Don't some people have enough money to buy newspapers?' I asked my father.

‘It's difficult for them.'

‘I think I saw a man steal one at the Club.'

‘Steal? Why? Don't be silly.'

‘He hid it inside his shirt.'

‘He wasn't stealing. He needed it.'

‘Can you take things if you need them?'

‘Sometimes.'

This was a new thought about stealing. I was ready to pursue it with more questions but he quelled me. ‘It's tough being a working man. You'll understand one day.'

But that night I overheard him talking to my mother. She said, ‘Our women's group will find something for him to wear. Too many unemployed men are keeping warm with newspaper. There's a shirt of yours, Niels.'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘but I don't have enough shirts for them all.'

She was bitter. ‘Years at war, their youth stolen, and now unemployed. What is this country coming to? The nation's gratitude is a mockery.'

After the lectures some of the men played billiards. My father didn't play. He told me he needed to talk union business with others. One evening I had used all my drawing paper and, bored, I wandered about looking at the several closed doors. Rather, I thought, like
Alice in Wonderland
, my favourite book. Which door, I wondered, should have
try me
written on it. The one near the corner of the room seemed to be rarely opened, or if it were people came and went through it one at a time. Clearly business was not talked there. I watched it for a while but it remained shut and tonight no one entered or left.

On tiptoe, and feeling guilty, I crept to the door, gingerly turned the handle and opened it enough to peep in. Inside was dim but light enough to make out a wall of bookshelves. It was a library. Nobody was there. I pushed the door wider and stole in.

The rows of books astounded me. I had a few books given to me as Christmas or birthday presents but except for
Alice in Wonderland
most were annuals. I had read and reread these until the covers fell off. I was amazed that the world held so many books and wondered if they were all at the Working Men's Club.

I shut the door behind me and a soft silence engulfed me. I breathed quietly and tiptoed to the shelves. The room was poorly lit so I stood up close to read the titles. I noticed that they were all in alphabetical order. The first two ‘A's were Aristotle and Aristophanes: strange foreign names. I took down the Aristotle and read inside that it was translated from the Greek. I didn't know what translated meant but once we had had a Greek sailor visiting on our hulk. Short and muscular, with dark hair and eyes, he spoke a mixture of English and Greek. My father had called him ‘an original Ulysses', a son born by, in and on the sea. So I supposed that this was the Greek the book talked about.

I turned the pages, discovered after all that they were in English and that Aristotle had been born over 2000 years ago. Shocked to be holding a 2000-year-old book I held it gingerly. Its covers were still intact. Perhaps nobody had ever read it and I was the first to open it. If it had lasted all this time I mustn't damage it, and with the utmost care I replaced it on the shelf.

I wasn't aware of the elderly white-haired man who stood at my shoulder until he spoke softly and I smelled his tobacco breath. ‘That's a very very old story.'

I jumped nervously. ‘Yes, I know. It says two thousand years. I haven't harmed it. I was just looking.'

His laugh was a wheeze. He caught his breath and coughed. ‘No, no, girlie, that book isn't two thousand years old. It's what's in it that's ancient. It was written by a Greek in Greek and has now been translated into English.'

He took it off the shelf. ‘See, this is just a re-print.' To my horror he thumbed the pages carelessly. I didn't confess that I was still confused about translation. ‘See,' he continued, ‘reprinted in 1910. Quite recent, really.'

He handed it to me. ‘You like reading?'

‘Yes,' I replied and then was silent, for in the presence of all these books I felt ashamed to confess how few I had read. It seemed my fault. That no one had given me the opportunity to read books didn't assuage my sense of inadequacy.

‘Then, maybe you can find something here that suits you.'

He assessed me with squinting blue eyes and a smile that wrinkled the corners of his mouth. ‘Perhaps not Aristotle. How old are you?'

‘Eleven. Nearly twelve.' It was not quite the truth because my eleventh birthday had been but a week ago, but somehow I felt I must defend myself, make myself as old as possible.

‘Then, Nearly-Twelve,' and the creases around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes wrinkled again, ‘have you read any of Jack London's stories?'

I shook my head.

He led me along the shelves until we came to the Ls, took down two books and handed them to me. I read the titles:
White Fang
and
Call of the Wild
. I turned the pages. There were no pictures, just printed words, hundreds of pages. Daunted, I appealed to him, ‘I won't have enough time tonight to read them here.'

He smiled at me, and although his eyes were kind I wondered why he looked a little sad.

‘You can take them home, you know.'

‘To keep?'

‘No, to borrow, girlie. All you need to do is sign that book on the table by the door, write down the title of the book and your name. You can keep the books for two weeks and then if you need you can borrow them again. Who did you come with?'

‘My father.'

‘Then, he can return them if you can't.'

‘Yes,' I said, clutching the precious volumes, ‘and when I have read these I can borrow others?'

His eyes strayed from me to the shelves, lingered there and he sighed. ‘It may be difficult for you, girlie.'

Difficult! That's what adults said when they really meant impossible.

‘I'm not allowed to borrow any more—only these?'

My spirits fell. A door had opened and shut. Like Alice I was too big to enter the magic garden and too small to reach the key on the table.

‘I'm nearly twelve,' I protested, and knew there were tears in my eyes.

‘No, no, girlie.' He looked unhappy. ‘You may borrow any books you like. But they are adult books and you won't find them much fun.'

Reprieved from my sick disappointment, I beamed at him. ‘Adult books don't worry me. Next time I shall begin at the As—Aristotle and Aristophanes.' I stumbled and he corrected my pronunciation. ‘Every fortnight I shall borrow a new book and one day I will have read all the books in here.'

He rubbed his chin and smiled at me. ‘Nearly-Twelve, you astound me. Artistophanes,' he chuckled, ‘that'll be an interesting read. It's always good for the old and cynical but maybe the young and hopeful can also enjoy it. I look forward to meeting you again in a fortnight.'

Sometimes our hulk anchored alongside a foreign ship and seamen from the Far East visited us. The Indian boys, who worked for a pittance at the most menial jobs on British ships, loved my mother and called her Mummy-ji. When they visited us they wore their own clothes, the same in summer and winter: baggy cotton trousers and a long over-shirt to their knees. In winter they clutched their arms around their chests in an effort to keep warm. My mother scrounged in second-hand clothing shops for old jumpers and jackets and decked out they were a motley group. Her favourite was Ganesh, with his large doe-like eyes and mouth full of bright white teeth, but she enveloped them all in kindness. She stood aside in her precious galley while they prepared us curries so hot that they exploded in our heads like tiny volcanoes and a lava of sweat poured down our faces and necks. They brought us small gifts of food that my mother accepted reluctantly but when they tried to spoil me with tiny brass pots inlaid with bright metals or sweet-smelling sandalwood boxes she told me not to accept them.