THE WINDOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 130, 19 December 1941, Page 43

THE WINDOW

S early as eight o’clock the Window had its first gazers. Two little boys, bent on being three-quarters of an hour early for school, the surprising habit of certain small _ boys, approached it, one saying, "My father’s in that window!" They pressed their noses to the glass. "He isn’t in his uniform, though," said the little boy regretfully. "Mummy ‘only had that old snap she took before he was a soldier." For a while they inspected a picture of a young man, pipe in mouth and pleasantly unwarlike, lounging with a dog on a sunlit lawn. The second little boy said, "You going to be a soldier when you grow up? I am. I’m going to kill millions ’n thousands of Narzees." The other child wanted to be an airman, and drop forty bombs on Hitler, and so, happily enlarging on bloody exploits to be performed in a war still obligingly in progress some fifteen years hence, they passed on. The brisk spring wind ruffled their hair. One of them had some of his baby curls still uncropped. Girls on their way to shops and offices came next to linger in front of the Window. "That’s an awfully good one of your brother, Lil,’ said Mary, wondering if Lil’s brother ever thought of her now. After all, one kiss at a party needn’t mean anything. She knew she wasn’t much to look at and so many things had happened to him since then that his mind was probably too full of them to remember her. As for her, she was a fool, she supposed, but that kiss had made her sure she'd never want anyone but him. Oh, well, she could ask Lil for his address, Might be just shyness, his not writing, she thought hopefully. How could she know, poor Mary, how successfully Lil’s ‘brother was conducting just then his flirtation with a pretty nurse in Cairo? bag bs we IL was not looking at her brother’s photograph. From a corner of the Window a thin young face looked out at her-a disturbingly good likeness to a young man with sensitive lips and gentle eyes. What had those eyes seen since they last looked into hers, that miserable morning at the station in the tain, when she had known too late that she should have done as he wished, go that she might have kissed him good-bye as wife, not fiancée? Would they be hard instead of gentle next time they met hers? There was a proud swagger about elderly Mr. Smith as he drew near the Window. He glanced about him, and was glad to see several acquaintances not far off as he stopped in front of it. The expected clap on the shoulder was not long in coming. "Congratulations, Dick," said the postmaster, "You must be proud of that boy of yours, The whole town’s talking about him getting that decoration." Mr. Smith beamed, and the two of them studied the snub nose and the grin of young /Ted Smith in the Window. Nobody ‘would have guessed he was made of heroic stuff, reflected the postmaster,

but kept his chuckle to himself as he remembered the day young Ted, deonde telegrams, had been chased by iggins’s Alsatian, and had returned to the post-office tearfully, with a rip in the seat of his fine new postman’s trousers. %* * * ‘[ BE bright spring day was in its late aiternoon when Mrs. King came to look in the Window. She had passed fruit trees in snowy bloom on her way to the town, and had wished her son were with her to see them. Were they really lovelier than ever this year, she wondered, or did they gain an extra beauty for her by reminding her of her son’s pleasure in them? MHer face clouded as she acknowledged another reason-that this was probably the last time the beauty of the spring blossoming would ever be spread. before her eyes. She stood there, small, flushed, and ill-looking, and searched for the, photograph of her son, Lennie. There he was-they had put him in the centre, It was a good photograph, She felt lonely at home without it, yet she liked to see his face here, surrounded by all those other young faces; though he’d always been a quiet boy, not making many friends, preferring his mother’s company mostly. Like a blow she remembered again the doctor’s words (she had begged him for the truth): "Only one chance in a hundred that youll pull through, Mrs, King." Next week she would go into the hospital. And when Lennie returned-the photo blurred, and she turned away. a * Bo WO women passed. One laughed ~ loudly, and pointed, "Seen my man in there? He’s got that fat now you’d never know him. Oh, yes," in answer to her companion, "I wouldn’t mind having him home again. Though I must say it’s a treat not having to wonder if he’s at the pub every night. Now what about a crayfish for tea?" Young Mrs. Johnson, with blue shadows under her eyes, hurried past, not looking at the Window. Jim’s photo was in there, and it was two long months since Jim had been reported, missing. This time last year she and Jim had walked together here, in love with each other and with life. It was late shopping night, and a crowd of big Maori girls, staying over-_ night in the town for a Saturday basketball tournament, discovered the. lighted Window. For a few minutes they excitedly pointed out Maori friends and relations, then one, giggling at first but soon carried away by her song, started "Maori Battalion March to Victory." The rest joined in, a full, rich chorus. People stopped to listen and applaud. The girls moved on, ‘dark young islanders talking of islands other than their own, chattering of Greece and Crete. * * % ALU the shoppers had gone home now, and the shops were shut. The Window was. darkened, for there was no one left to read the legend: MEN FROM THIS DISTRICT WHO ARE SERVING OVERSEAS, or to dwell upon the photographs below. And far away in

foreign places young soldiers looked at death and loneliness and imprisonment and pain, confronting these unwonted horrors no less steadfastly than their likenesses, from the Window, gazed out at the comfortably familiar street of the little country town.

J.

B.