Hunger Town by Wendy Scarfe Page B

to my mother that I would be quite safe with him. We took the train from the Port into the city and then a tram to Winnie’s suburb. From the tram stop we walked along the footpath. The houses here hid behind high walls, overshadowed by leafy trees. Winnie’s home, built from the lovely Adelaide pink stone, was double fronted with a central door and windows on each side opening onto a wide veranda.
    Inside, a passage ran centrally to a kitchen at the back. Bedrooms and living rooms opened off the passage. They were high ceilinged with decorative cornices and plaster rosettes circling central light hangings. The large lounge room had a glittering chandelier. Winnie’s bedroom had two single beds and a long window, which overlooked the garden. My cabin would have fitted into a third of the room and even the beauty of my mother and father’s cabin could never match the elegance of this house. This house said ‘money’.
    â€˜Winnie,’ I said, suddenly anxious, ‘perhaps you shouldn’t come with Harry and me tonight.’
    Awed by my surroundings I had a terrified feeling that Harry and I held something exquisite and fragile in our hands and by a moment’s carelessness we could smash it into small pieces. I don’t know why at that moment I thought it a crime to endanger Winnie’s beautiful lifestyle. Perhaps it was akin to the feeling I had had many years earlier when I dropped a delicately carved wooden box Ganesh had given me, breaking it into several pieces.
    This house was luxurious beyond my wildest dreams, elegant and peaceful. I envied Winnie, but I wanted no part in destroying it. Winnie’s eyes filled with the ubiquitous tears. ‘You and Harry always leave me out of things these days. Harry used to be my special friend.
    â€˜Oh, Winnie,’ I cried, ‘I’m so sorry. It’s not like that at all. Harry loves you. You’re his favourite cousin. Of course you must come with us.’ She brightened and dried her eyes.
    Winnie’s parents were away for the night and had happily agreed to allow her to stay home so long as I was there also. ‘They think that you’re a solid, hard-working, admirable girl,’ Winnie said, rolling her eyes, ‘and, of course, there is also our dog to take care of both of us.’
    She patted a large lolloping good-hearted Labrador that would have loved to death any intruder but because he was a dog he was considered a protector. He did have a deep bark but it was more joyous and welcoming than threatening. ‘It’s hard to know with dogs,’ she said wisely. ‘Now if I were threatened, who knows?’
    I regarded the grinning snuffling beast that had laid his head trustingly on my lap and could not imagine him attacking anyone, even to defend Winnie. But then even the gentlest can fight for the ones they love, I thought. Maybe, we’re a lot like dogs.
    â€˜I would have liked a dog,’ I said, ‘but it was impossible on the hulk. We had a cat called Emerald because of her green eyes but she found her way into the hold and died under a fall of coal.’
    I had never been allowed to cuddle Emerald. My mother feared her fleas. Some years earlier, before I was born, there had been a scare in the Port of an outbreak of bubonic plague from foreign ships. So we kept a cat to control the rats and then my mother worried that the cat might be a carrier. So I had grown up with an uncomfortable, sometimes embarrassing fear of animals.
    Winnie said it was their cook’s night off but she’d left some cold meat and salad for us, and some cake. We sat around the table which the cook had set for Winnie before she left. We munched in conspiratorial ‘brotherhood’ Harry said. I said ‘sisterhood’. This seemed to delight the other two so much that they laughed uproariously.
    Harry had brought three old paint tins with clag in them and three brushes. The tins had handles