‘A holiday,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So that should improve things, don’t you think?’ He certainly hoped it would.
‘It will be winter.’
‘We can rug up.’
‘If only life could be fixed with a simple trip to the seaside,’ she said bitterly, and turned to put her thumb under the tap.
Forty-One
The Shadow
Friday, 11 July 1924, Melbourne, when a ruckus occurs.
‘She’s added Walsh to her name now,’ Beth said to Clara.
‘Who?’
‘Adela Pankhurst. She married a fella from the union in seventeen and they’ve got several children. She’s left the Communist Party. Paul is furious. And disappointed, I think.’
They had come straight from work, still in their uniforms and were standing next to each other at the back of the Fitzroy Town Hall Reading Room. The room was only meant to accommodate a hundred people but Beth was sure there were already at least a hundred and fifty crowded in to hear Adela Pankhurst Walsh. The seats were all gone when she and Clara arrived. It was stuffy and women were fanning their faces with pamphlets. There were only a handful of men scattered among the audience.
Adela came out of a side door and everyone applauded. She stood behind a podium and gripped its sides tightly. She waited for quiet and then nodded to a man at the side of the room who held a baby girl in one arm and the hands of two young children with the other. Beth thought he must be her husband, Tom. Adela was dressed in a very smart suit that Beth thought looked quite expensive.
Turning to the crowd, Adela bellowed into the silence, ‘I am going to form a new organisation. This will be a revolutionary organisation that will combat the evil of communism …’
‘That’s even more of a turnaround than I expected,’ Beth said to Clara and someone said, ‘Shhh.’
‘… and uphold the Christian way of life and family,’ Adela yelled. ‘Australia will be a great member of the British Empire. We will bring an end to the current industrial strife and restore goodwill and cooperation to industry. We will be deeply committed to ending communism and to furthering charitable work. We will hold regular tea parties for the wives of unemployed men, and children’s meetings. Women, you must think about what your new-found employment is doing to the men of this country. Men who spilled their lifeblood over the whole surface of the earth, whose bones are strewn thick beneath every sea in the interests of future generations. Think of how you are draining their initiative from them, stealing their rightful places as providers and protectors! Are your men at home melancholy, turning to drink and gambling? Of course they are! Because of you women who insist on working!’
Beth could feel her blood boiling. She took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Adela Pankhurst Walsh you are a traitorous piece of work! Rights for women! Rights for women! Rights for women! Let women work!’
Clara joined in right away and a few other women joined in on the third ‘Rights for women,’ but Beth was immediately identified as the ringleader and two burly men nodded at each other and before she had time even to close her mouth she found herself lifted off the ground as the two men grabbed her by the arms and escorted her from the meeting, not caring they were hurting her arms, tearing her dress or dragging her good shoes along the ground. Clara came running out after her.
Beth was deposited on the steps of the Town Hall under its six massive columns like a bag of rubbish.
‘Did they hurt you?’ Clara cried, then she turned on the security men. ‘How dare you manhandle her like that! Look at the size of you and look at the size of her.’
Beth had suffered far worse, having been jailed overnight several times in the past few years, but she wanted the men to be ashamed for being on the wrong side and nodded as Clara railed.
Beth brushed the feel of the men’s hands off her arms and, when she felt Clara had railed long enough, she said, ‘Don’t worry, Clara, I’m fine. I just can’t believe Adela. One minute fighting for women’s rights and now she’s got a husband and children of her own, suddenly women should be in the kitchen and nowhere else.’
‘Let’s go home,’ said Clara, ‘and not think about her any more.’ She tucked her arm into Beth’s and squeezed it and Beth smiled at her. Beth gave one last death stare to the two security guards and they walked arm in arm to Flinders Street station and caught the train home to Port Melbourne. From the station they walked to the little single-fronted cottage they rented in Princes Street. Every five minutes Beth said, ‘I just can’t believe her,’ and Clara would reply, ‘The bitch — she beggars belief.’
Beth had moved into Clara’s little house in Port Melbourne on her very first day in Melbourne and had never moved out. Beth felt at home living with Clara, and she felt at home with herself. She liked being an independent modern woman, it made her feel real, and now she wanted that for all women. She had the passion of the newly converted. Beth collected the afternoon mail from the letterbox and Clara opened the front door and Beth took off her coat, hung it on the hook and led the way down the narrow hallway to the kitchen at the back which looked over a tiny backyard just big enough for Beth to grow some herbs. She had nine pots of herbs lined up around the fence — nasturtiums, peppermint, parsley and chives, watercress (which was a pain because it had to be replanted so often but was so lovely in sandwiches), arthritis herb, which she made into pots of tea for Lilly who needed it for her joints, comfrey for wounds (Edie had told
