Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 324, 9 April 1928, Page 4

Mundane Musings

Ukulele Lovers

It was the latest in Night Clubs. It had already remained open for two weeks and was actually still alive and kicking (in fact, kicking high over the traces). Lemon squash, the answer to which was certainly not a lemon, but was squeezed from the “belly of the grape” somewhere near Epernay, was flowing out of jugs, deceitful in spite of their transparency. The walls were black, with orange figures which represented, according to our degree of knowledge and the potency of our libations, the Lido and its half-baked personalities, or the Garden of Eden and its occupants before the Fall. I have heard the two versions, but 1 believe myself " that the two ochre figures are those of Omar Khayyam and “Thou.” There was certainly wilderness and happiness enough about, if not on the walls. The saxophonist was doing his best to imitate a prima donna with a cold in the head; and the drummer was calling to dinner some cannibal tribe (or it sounded like it) with furious relish. The pianist alone looked drooping and desabuse. ITe had once been a musician. The night (though sophisticated) was was still young. It was barely two; the term “barely” springs to my pen, suggested, perhaps, by the backless frock with the obi bow of the woman at the next table. I say a “woman,” but she was really quite a girl under her make-up. She looked thirty, but -would have looked twenty if you had washed her face. It would have been a pity, though, to have destroyed so much applied art. The background .of her complexion was a delicate terra-cotta, getting less delicate over the cheek bones, her lips were puce, as were the inside of her nostrils —this is what first awakened my interest, as it reminded me of a certain rocking-horse (tailless, and maneless, but beloved), of my nursery days. Talking of maneless, my neighbour grew hair above her forehead, but was shorn almost to the skin all over the rest of her head. Long earrings, in the shape of gold snakes, tickled her shoulders. Her corsage, modestly high in front, allowed you, nevertheless, to count her ribs from the opening under the arms. She was incredibly thin, delightfully decadent, and absurdly attractive in the same way that a clever caricature or a gargoyle, or a Japanese print, is attractive —deliciously fantastic. But had she been 10 years younger, and belonged to poor parents, the S.P.C.A. might have had something to say about her emaciated condition. She wore a* snake around her throat, one around her arm, and another around her ankle. The man with her sported somewhat more hair than she did, but less brilliantine and no ntake-up. He made up for it, however, by wearing a pair of hornspectacles and several gold teeth. He also would have been quite young without those American adjuncts. His throat was the restingplace of a huge butterfly, in white pique. His trousers were very large, which made his feet appear smaller than those of his companion. He toyed with a long cigarette-holder of some green substance, but she contented herself with a small cigar. They spoke very little, danced a lot, and drank a great deal, not holding hands under the table. Her left garter had a shield design, but from where I was I could not quite decipher wfrat was written on it, or perhaps it was in Latin! They danced seriously and admirably, as if welded together, in the small square of the floor. As they spoke very loudly I gathered from their conversation that the graceful contortions they had just exhibited were called the “Kinkajou.” The girl evinced her opinion that the “Kinkajou” was “divine,” and that it was high time something new had turned up, as the old blues were “putrid.” I found her more fantastic than ever.

Suddenly an anachronism about her diverted my attention from her talk. She was holding between her Chinese claws a beautiful little fan from Paris, a reproduction of a Watteau scene. Shepherds in tender blues, shepherdesses in rose-coloured paniers, lazy and idyllic, playing the lute with silly and delightful amorousness, while fccribboned lambs were disporting themselves over a dream landscape of pastel hues.

The youth took off his spectacles to examine better the strange object. 1 mean strange by its juxtaposition. He looked long at the nymphs, so pink and white, dainty and dimpled, listening for ever to the frail aria played by their lovers. “Rather jolly!” he said. The girl, who had also been staring at the sweetly pretentious pastoral, sighed. “M’yep—too heavenly!” she said then, as if apropos of some elusive whim. “Why can’t you take me to the country some day?” He looked at her with astonishment. “Why, didn’t we motor out last weekend?” “Oh,” she commented, “motored!” “Well, you don’t mean to say you'd like to sit on the grass the whole day like all those blightei's in the fan, doing nothing, listening to me for hours playing the ukulele.” “The lute,” corrected the girl. “It must have been rather fun living in those days, with the men putting themselves out to fascinate you, and saying nice things.” “Oh, no. they wouldn’t have—not to you!” said the youth, not disagreeably, but with conviction. * “You’d never have ‘got off’ in those days. Why, they’d have thought you a scarecrow. Thes r went in for curves and curls, and—look, all those girls have got double chins! They just bulge all over. How would you like to have a double chin, kid?” The girl smiled faintly, and sucked at her cigar. “All the same, they look so contented —so smug. I wonder it must be lovely to ... be made love to!” The youth in his stupefaction almost dropped his cigarette-holder. “Well, I am . . .” he exclaimed indignantly. “Don’t I make love to you? What is it you do want, anyway?” and, looking at the inanely earnest shepherds on the fan, fingers poised above the lute, “and you used to think I could play the ukulele.” The girl jumped up. “Come on, old thing. lam a brute. Of course, you play beautifully. I was just—ragging.- ’ But as they “Yaled” past me, two youthful, serious skeletons interlocked. T could see in the girl’s eyes a sort of hungry 100k —a wistfulness. What was it she wanted, the youth had asked. What was it they had had, those women of the past, and that she had not? What was—was it —ridiculous, of course, but could it be romance?