A MEETING WAS ARRANGED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 80, 3 January 1941, Page 44

A MEETING WAS ARRANGED

(Written for "The Listener’ by

JEAN

STEVENSON

IVE minutes before the boat train was due the station was still almost deserted; the girl who walked quickly along the platform was the only bright thing to be seen on this dismal nor-west winter morning. Five minutes to wait. Then she would meet Peter Isbister, the painter whose work she admired more than any other New Zealander’s. "Stand under the clock," he had written to her, " and I’ll easily find you." Yes, this was an adventure. Quite unlike New Zealand, really. She, Kathie Emerson, had suddenly one day taken her courage in her hands and had written to this painter: "Dear Peter Isbister, You don’t know me. But I admire your work so much I feel I must say so." Just like writing to a film star, her friends had said. But Kathie Emerson had explained how different it was. Peter Isbister was obviously a painter who had something to say. His pictures had line and form. Line and form and light. And of course his colour sense was simply marvellous. For three months Kathie Emerson wrote long letters appreciating Peter Isbister’s work; and received from him an equal number of letters, shorter but quite encouraging. She wrote to him about the novel she was working on. ' And now he was coming; he would have more than an hour before he left by the express for the south; they would have breakfast together; Kathie Emerson stood on the cold station and made plans about the future. Suddenly, for no particular reason, she was doubtful. Perhaps she would not like him. He must not see her first. She must see him before he saw her. She must arrive a little late. Quickly, as the train shrieked into the station, she moved among the people who now crowded through the entrance. From this shelter she watched the place under the clock where there stood two young men with packs and ice-axes, and an elderly woman with a dog on a lead. Kathie Emerson watched the platform doors as the train slowed. She watched a young man give his hand to an old man who moved with difficulty, a stick in "his right hand, a large flat parcel under his left arm. An old man who said, "‘ Much obliged, much obliged. Can you tell me where the clock is?" Kathie Emerson ran out of the station and walked angrily along Morehouse Avenue, with the nor’-wester swirling the dust round her feet and the blaring of taxi horns assailing her ears. -- % at * Petek;tabiater was alert aa wie awake as the boat train clanked him through the net-work of: lines towards the misted lights of the station. Meeting his first fan. This would be interesting, surely, He’d take her to breakfast-the shakedown on the boat. had given him a few: spare ‘shillings.! He stood up, slung his knap-sack over his shoulder, casually oar a old man to his feet, carried his helped him down the steps Geresdn’ UE

the clock was. Peter Isbister would have taken him to it. But, just in time, he saw a woman who stood there waiting; elderly, rain-coated, felt-hatted, with rimless glasses and a small dog on a lead. "Stiffen the crows!" muttered Peter Isbister as he dived into the crowd; "the old hag!" And he went to fast alone and thankfully.