But it is not only among the well-to-do people that the spirit of comradeship shows itself, as it did to me that first morning up in the back blocks—it is everywhere among all classes. People have done surprising things for me—people to whom I was a complete stranger—while among themselves, from squatters to swaggies, though they do not write essays on friendship, they will hold by a mate through good and ill—and most of all through ill.
One instance, which, though it belongs to New South Wales, is so typical of this that I cannot resist quoting it, was lately cited in the Sydney Bulletin, which says:
“The Outback can still breed some true mates. One of them was heard of at Parkes (N.S.W.) the other day. With another man—a good deal older than himself—he had tramped into Forbes looking for work. On the way the older man’s boots gave out, so the mate bought him a pair, and then had only a few shillings left. They didn’t get the work they were after, so they decided to give their feet a rest and take the rail to Parkes. The older man’s fare was fixed up all right, but the young one quietly took a ticket as far as his money would stretch, and then, with a breezy: ‘So long!’ he got out and walked. The older man rode on; but bad luck had got him down, and when his mate turned up at Parkes he was a corpse. The coroner’s court said it was suicide on the part of one, and mighty fine and generous behaviour on the part of the other; and witnesses and others insisted on dropping their fees and some odd coins into the white man’s empty hat.”
CHAPTER V
THE WORKING-WOMEN OF MELBOURNE, AND IN
PARTICULAR THE CHAR-LADY
Very few people of any social standing beyond a few college professors and doctors actually live in Melbourne. But, still, it is thickly inhabited, and has a curious sublife of its own, quite distinct from that of the people who flock to it during business hours; returning again to their suburbs between five and six, only to reappear later, like flashing meteors, on their way to the theatre and supper at The Vienna or Paris Café. The professors congregate for the most part round the University, and the doctors up at the east end of Collins Street, where one would imagine there must be at least one doctor to every five people in the town. But beyond these there are the upper parts of shops, where the tradesmen who cannot yet afford a villa in suburbia live; and dingy, narrow streets, with little huddled homes where the workpeople dwell, and out of which issue on Sundays and high days the most resplendently attired young women that you could possibly imagine; while, besides these, there are huge blocks of buildings known as “Chambers,” the inhabitants of which are less easy to place—and what a hotch-potch they do present in all faith, kept ever a-simmer by a flame of gossip.
Rooms in these places are all prices, all sizes, all degrees of comfort or dinginess. Melbourne Mansions head the list; but these are really flats, beautifully appointed and proportionally dear. The drop from them is sudden indeed, chiefly marked by the washing accommodation. In Melbourne Mansions each suite, even if it consists of but two rooms, has its own bathroom attached. But the next step down in price gives two bathrooms, with hot water laid on, between the inhabitants of each floor, one floor for men, the next for women, and so on. Thus, if you live on the landing where the men’s bathroom is, and you happen to be a woman, you must walk the length of a long passage, and upstairs in your dressing-gown before you can reach your morning tub. It is all very well if you are early, before anyone else is about, but if you are late, you meet all the men coming out of their rooms on their way to work. Another drawback being that you more than occasionally forget to take your latchkey with you, and do not realize your fatal error till you return from your ablutions, when you alternately cower against your lintel and make wild dashes to the lift: entreating the lift-man to send the caretaker with his duplicate key, so that you may gain the shelter of your own apartment.
There is a rule that no one shall wash clothes in these baths, but everybody does; and when I used to hear the tap running furiously, and someone singing loudly behind the locked door, it needed no particular penetration to guess that it was all done with the idea of muffling the sound of scrubbing and rinsing. Considering the incomes of the people who lived in these chambers, and the exorbitant prices charged by laundresses; also the fact that many of the tenants have only one room, and have to carry both clean and dirty water up and down stairs, this washing habit cannot be wondered at; and only when people, quite beyond the pale, wash their saucepans and frying-pans in the same manner do any but the most inveterate grumblers register a serious complaint. Though I must say a great deal of sound and fury always rages round the bathrooms; one great scandal I remember being started by a lady whose husband had seen another lady going to the bath in her robe de nuit alone.
These particular chambers, or rather the entrance passages and stairs, are kept beautifully clean by a small army of men and char-ladies; as for the rooms—well, they vary; though it seems that the smarter the ladies are who come out of them the less savoury is any glance or whiff that one catches through the open door. But these are mostly comparative idlers: those people who never do have time for anything. No praise that I can give would be too high for the bona-fide working or business girls, who form a large percentage of the inhabitants of these places, the way they toil to keep themselves and their belongings dainty and fresh, and their unbounded goodness to any fellow in distress; their cheeriness and gallant efforts to keep up appearances, being beyond words.
There are telephone-girls, typewriting-girls, shop-girls, tea-room girls, University students, art students, dressmakers, and milliners. For the most part they live in one room, that presents on the whole a very cheerful appearance, with disguised packing-cases masquerading as cupboards—in which all the toilet paraphernalia is poked away—pegs with a curtain over them for a wardrobe, a basket and deck-chair or so, and a trestle-bed, which during the day does duty for a couch. These rooms are often no bigger than a medium-sized bathroom, but the girls entertain there; their men friends come to supper, and they make coffee over the little gas-ring, or primus, and cut anchovy sandwiches, and have a very cheerful time—washing up the cups in the bathroom at dead of night when it is all over. There is much gaiety and good-comradeship, and a little too much noise, perhaps. But if you are young, and have been tapping a typewriter all the day and answering your snappy employer in respectful monosyllables only, it is good, no doubt, to feel you are still a woman; and there are men in the world who like to talk to you, and would like to make love to you; cannot bear your soiling your hands over the kerosene stove; and are really disturbed because you look tired. After a long day’s grind to have a hot bath, which makes you feel as good as anyone; and brush your hair till it shines, Melbourne girls are veritable artists in hairdressing, marvellous when one thinks of the size of the looking-glasses; then to put on your best Jap silk blouse—at one and four-three a yard—made by yourself, aye, and washed and ironed again and again by yourself, and arrange your threepenny bunch of flowers in the vases, and turn the cushions to the clean side. Then “play at ladies,” waiting for your guests to arrive, life is really very pleasant, and the next day’s work seems far away; besides, anything may happen before that, for the life even of the most ordinary girl is full of infinite possibilities. Though if the expected visitors do not turn up, and send a wire or a note at the last moment, it is little short of killing; while the sight of the anchovy sandwiches—all curled up—which you try to eat for breakfast, in the cold dawn of the next day, because you simply cannot afford to waste them, seems the last straw.
These girls work incredibly hard, and live the straightest, simplest of lives, every day of which is a series of petty privations and self-denial, in spite of small pleasures. That some gayer damsels do have rooms in these buildings merely for the sake of the liberty it allows them, and use it, too, to its full extent, has, on the whole, given them rather a bad name. But this is grossly unjust to the greater number of the residents, who live there for the very good reason that they would rather have the tiniest room of their own, and “leave off work to carry bricks,” than herd with a lot of others in a boarding-house, at the mercy of a landlady. They rise very early—one kind-hearted music-teacher used to bring me a cup of tea in bed nearly every morning at six—and though I always turned out myself at half-past, I was never by any means first. The girls get their own breakfast—and along every corridor one hears the whirr of primus stoves; and smells, and breathes in, an atmosphere of kerosene, sausages and bacon; coffee is generally kept for evening parties, tea being both cheaper and more easily made. For the most part business girls have their lunch out, or take it with them—generally the all-ubiquitous scones and tea; but when they come back from work they get their own evening meal, and then the roaring of the primus starts afresh.