MUNDANE MUSINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 28, 26 April 1927, Page 4

MUNDANE MUSINGS

JOAN AND A FLATINANIMATE SPECIES T’other day I strolled round to Joan’s fiat, thinking that there I could quench my thirst in flowing bowls of . . . China tea. The child greeted me with a mournful look, and opened a cheery littlo conversation by declaring in a heartbroken voice: “My dear, I’m absolutely convinced that there’s no race on earth so unjustly treated and so harassed as landlords ! ” “Joan, my little lump of butter.” I gasped in amazement, “ ’(was only a very few days ago that you held forth to me # about that particular section of the community being hard-fisted, merciless, blood-suckers who had the poor, ill-treated tenant perpetually under their iron thumbs! What has happened ?” “That, my dense lamb, was when I was a tenant. It’s entirely different since I bought this flat. I’ve been trying to let the place so that I can go with Marie and Ann for a six months’ holiday, and between ourselves I’ve found out that I was mistaken about landlords being the ones who benefit by infamous and unjust laws. “D’you know, the day after I advertised the place a dreadful woman came up to see it. Oh, an impossible person! Of course, I showed her over the fiat, and pointed out all its very special features . . . showed her the wonderful labour-saving devices that I had installed . . . and was generally as cordial and nice as I could be. She poked all over the place in such a way that I was dying to hit her, but even then she dragged open the wardrobe, on the pretence that she wanted to see how roomy it was, I didn’t say a word. The cat! I knew she only wanted to see how many clothes I’d got! “She asked the rent finally, and as nonchalantly as possible I told her it was four guineas. “What do you think she had the cheek to say? You’d never believe it, darling! She just raised her eyebrows, and said in a vinegary voice: “‘Pour guineas! Why, I can get a much better flat than this in Mount Eden for two pounds a week!’ “Such cheek, to compare Symonds Street with Mount Eden! I was perfectly self-controlled, though, and just asked quietly: “ ‘Mount Eden? Now where is Mount Eden?' and before she could reply, I said as sweetly as possible, % ‘Oh, of course, that’s that dreadful place where the prison is, isn’t it?’ “Wasn’t it just, too good of me, to squash her subtly like that, instead of just heaving the fire-irons at her, as any ordinary person would have done? “She was dreadfully flustered, naturally, but before she had time to say anything, I ushered her out, and said in my very best ‘Rolls-Royce’s-are-nothing-to-me’ voice, ‘Yes, I believe you can catch the Black Maria to Mount Eden . . .’ and with that I slammed the door on her.”

“H’mm! Wasn’t it p’raps being just a little bit unpractical, Joan, to dispatch her like that? You know you might have come to terms.”

“Come to terms with a haggling old thing like she was? Don’t be comic, my treasure. I wouldn’t have had her in the place. She had too large a nose, anyhow!” “Too large a nose! Good Lord! I didn’t know that was a serious vice,” I protested, ruefully fingering my own not-too-tiny-nasal appendage. But my hurt looks escaped Joan’s notice. “My dear, I wouldn’t trust a woman with a huge nose for anything. I’m sure she’d break the locks off all the boxes in the spare room, so’s she could read my old love letters . . . and, of course, she’d chop up the chairs for kindling wood . . . and find out all aboLit me from the tradesmen ... . specially the milkman, whom I’m always meeting on the doorstep,” declared the child shamelessly. “But, Joan, surely you could have demanded references?” “References! Don’t be mid-Vic-torian, my dear. . . . why even journalists can get references these days. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on. No, I’d much rather rely on my intuition as to a person’s character. It never lets me down! ” * * * “The next person who came to see the place was rather a nice old lady,” continued Joan, “but, of course, there was a catch in that. She looked through the place and loved it all, and she agreed to the rental, and I’m sure she’d have kept the place beautifully clean . . . but she was worse than the other one in the end.” “Really! Did she have unpuckered eyebrows?” “Don’t be stupid, dearest. It was much worse. She wanted to bring along her own curtains and pictures!” said Joan in a hollow voice, as though announcing the coming of Doomsday. “Well, and is that a crime? Surely she wasn’t asking you to live with them!”

“Oh, you are annoying and lacking in a sense of the finer things of life! How on earth do you think I could have come back and live.d in a place that had been made hideous with be* ribboned lace curtains, probably tied back in neat loops, or between walls that had been damned with copies of ‘Cupid Asleep and Awake’ and the tenant’s grandchildren’s studies in ‘Still Life’ supported on either side by caricatures of her maternal ancestors done in life-size oil colours? It would have taken a lifetime to live down the atmosphere. “But yesterday I thought I’d at last found a tenant who would suit me beautifully. He was such a dear . . . you know the type . . . smiling blue eyes in a yard or so of khaki face . . . black ripply hair and big, snugglylooking shoulders ... in fact, he was just the natural heir to any thrilling sub-title such as: “ ‘His searching glance seemed to penetrate to the innermost heart of the great open spaces’ . . . or anything like that. “He adored the furnishings and the colour scheme, and do you know, we found we had mutual likings among the poets . . . and we’d both been to •No, No, Nanette’ on the same evening. “He asked me to dinner, and we had the most priceless time. He’s the soul of wit, my dear. His definition of ‘uneducated’ is that it’s an adjective describing 99 per cent, of love-making. And, incidentally, can’t he make the most delightful love! Oh, but how it banishes the memory of the other “Well,” I asked at last, daring to break into the glowing recital of the youth’s virtues, “when is he going to take the flat?” “Unfortunately, he can’t,” replied Joan sadly. “You see, they got him the next day.” “Got him? Who got him and why?” “The police, darling. The poor lad had absent-mindedly stuck down someone else’s name on a cheque . . . and oh, you know what a lot of silly red tape and fussiness there is in Government departments. . . . I was so upset when some awful detective person had the effrontery to describe him as a ‘habitual criminal’ ... as though anyone with eyes as blue as his could be! But it just goes to prove what I said . . . landlords are an awfully enduring race. No sooner do I discover a really suitable tenant, than the Government step in and appropriate him.” H.M.