MOTHER AND ME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 101, 30 May 1941, Page 8

MOTHER AND ME

=(Written for "The Listener" by

OLD-TIMER

MET him first at the slack hour of 9.30 p.m. in a milkshake bar. The plainest of the girls was attending to him in a perfunctory way. I am small myself, but he was shorter still and they had not succeeded in shrinking his uniform down. There was a surplus of cuff and elbow to it. Even without his freckles he was plain. His hair was tousled and carroty. and his eyes were a watery blue. What first touched me in regard to him was his being without a cobber. Coffee and toast in both hands, he slouched over to the table where I was contending with a sundae, and sat down. There was a billowing wrinkle across the shoulders of the tunic, but judging himself by his own standards, I could see that he considered that as an infantry man he looked the part. When I began to talk to him I could see that my sense of the pathos of his lot was misplaced. He had the divine gift of se:quanimitas so over-praised by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca. In better chosen words he felt that things were quite O.K. E got going on the subject of the weather. When he left home for Trentham he had been anxious as to a possible shortage of winter feed. But mild and frequent autumn rains had brought the grass on and with two small silos he had lately dug near the byre, ’ he was confident that the farm would win through. He was not in the least aware that he was alone in the great city (pop. 162,143). I judge him to have spent most of his life very contentedly in his own company. Equable and ever affable in a quiet way, he never even noticed how the great world was passing him by. I did not invite him to my home, for such hospitality would have taxed his limited social powers and mine, but I came across him in Willis Street next day when we were both at a loose end and we went into the Britannia and had a couple of handles together. His moderation I found was incorrigible and two are always quite enough for me. After that we made a few appointments together. We saw the new Chaplin film. He was a Chaplin fan and thought Charlie was as good as ever. I felt that in his latest Charlie had started talking at the top of his voice, a thing no artist should do. But I forebore to criticise, sophistication would have been out of place in his tolerant, easy going company. He had little fault to find with the world as a going concern and his cultural standards were not exacting. had a street photo taken together. The contrast between my fashionable attire and his rumpled khaki did not in the least embarrass him and the photo led on to real intimacy. He was going to send it home. The burden of his conversation after this became "Mother and Me," "Me and Mother."

His old man, he said, had not been a bad sort, but was a terror to go on the bust. He had plastered five mortgages on the place and after he had fallen dead by the pig sty, it had taken Him and Mother ten years to clear the farm. Now they had the whole fifty acres free of encumbrances and were getting together a tip-top little Jersey herd. As a_ psychologist I at once realised that he had never been weaned of the mother compiex, but he did not seem to know that in being wrapped up in his mother he was emotionally maladjusted in a way that would have given a psycho-therapist the greatest uneasiness. It was I who broached the subject of sex. He was honest but embarrassed just as you might be in admitting his failures. There Aad been a girl, the daughter of an adjoining cocky. They had been Arty and Eileen to each other from their school days and had helped with each other’s herds in times of sickness and other emergencies. But his fidelity had borne no fruit. She had taken up with a buyer of fats and as he thought a lot of her he had given them an electric range. He didn’t think he understood girls. Who bar Casanovas do? He understood mother though, and gave, with rather wearisome detail, an account of their joint battle against the mortgages. Mother was a churchgoer and though higher things were a blur to his practical mind he had gone to the mixture of Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican ministration that is handed out in remote localities. He had enlisted because mother and he had begun to feel that it was up to him. His mother, a woman with opinions, had had a deep respect for Mr. Chamberlain and regarded our Empire as a_ benevolent joint stock company. Personally he had no ideas on politics. If others went he supposed he ought to go. ¥ MOTHER" came down to see him off. As I had half suspected, she was a shade too decided for my taste and I had a hard time keeping my own views out of her road. Also, ideologically speaking, I deserve credit for taking a good deal of her dust. I think she was a bit jealous. She wasn’t satisfied with a mere ninety-nine per cent. of her partner in life. She was a small well-knit little woman with rather comely features and a bun of yellow hair going grey. She saw no difficulty whatever in life. Certain things were right and certain things were wrong. You did what was right (a thing, by-the-by, that according to her no Government ever did). Arty was going because it was the right thing to do. Arty listened with pleasure and respect to her views. He expected me to be impressed and I was. She found the parting unexpected! hard. She was so practical in to her son and in guiding him along the straight path to the last minute that her realisation of the fact that they were to part for years and perhaps for ever coming only at the last minute, bowled (Continued on next page)

"MOTHER AND ME" (Continued from previous page) her over and for once he had to take the lead and let her lean on him. I still see her, one wisp of grey hair straggling over her cheek, gazing at the gap where he had disappeared through the big gates, with rarely-shed tears streaming down her face. PERSONALLY, two things pleased me on that day of leave-takings. When Arty and me met for a last handle he had a cobber. A giant of a man who also wore his uniform badly, a bush worker with red hands the size of hanis. He was as good-natured and unopinionative as Arty himself. The other thing was this. As my small warrior strode sturdily along in his three, a really nice girl saw him, one of the most stylish girls, too, that lined the route. There is a mother as well as a sweetheart in all nice girls. She stepped forward, took a bunch of violets from her bosom and pinned them abashed on the little soldier. He was terribly embarrassed, for the thing he hated most in life was publicity of any sort. Yet at bottom I think he was pleased. Myself, I handed it to that girl in spite of her tinted fingernails. Her instinct was sound. She had picked on a true knight.