WIRELESS IS WONDERFUL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 177, 13 November 1942, Page 6

WIRELESS IS WONDERFUL

(A Short Story, written for "The Listener" by

ISOBEL

ANDREWS

ICHARD Harold Ramsay Furness was a young man of imagination. In fact he had so much imagination when he was younger that his mother said she never knew where she was with him. As he grew .up, people began to think he was a genius. Once people started thinking that way, it wasn’t hard for Richard to think so, too. So he rented a studio, grew a beard, and people. got quite proud of being able to say they knew him. He used to give those sort of parties where the savouries are small, the drinks big, and where everybody goes round with cigarettes and calls you darling but forgets who you really are, They all said Richard was marvellous without being quite sure what he was being marvellous about. They knew he was an artist, because nobody but an artist would rent a studio om grow a beard, so they all went round telling each other what a wonderful imagination Richard had, and how marvellous it was to have a gift. NYWAY, one day Richard was sitting in "his studio when he heard a step on the stair. Hurriedly dropping Ellery Queen into the waste-paper basket, he relaxed into his favourite position, which was an almost exact copy of Rodin’s statue but with more clothes on, and who should appear at the door but a man with a wireless. Now, as everyone knows, a wireless is the manifestation of the decadence of modern art, and no self-respecting artist will have one on his mind, much less in his studio. So Richard drew himself up to his full height of five foot three and three-quarters and, in a pose which made him look like Napoleon on board the Bellerophon, but without the hat, said, take away that bauble. But the man with the wireless was no more obtuse and no more brilliant than any other man with a wireless, so he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said he’d be adjectived if he was going to carry the adjectival thing down them adjectival adjectival stairs again. You see, he had got it into his head that the wireless was meant for Richard Harold Ramsay Furness, when all the time it was addressed to Mr. Harold Ramsay Richards who, by a strange freak of chance, lived next door. Nothing that Richard Harold could say would make the wireless man do anything but fix the darn thing into the wall at the south end of the studio,

When he had done that, he told Richard that it was an adjectival hot day to be fixing adjectival wirelesses in an adjectival room like that when it was three flights up and all, but Richard Harold didn’t believe in alcoholism in the lower orders, so the wireless man left with a dirty look and nothing in his pocket. ICHARD was just going to rescue Ellery from the depths of the W.P.B. when he became conscious of a woman’s voice. In spite of himself, he had to listen, The woman told him that no one must know. That ‘even if he hated her for ever, she could not tell him. Now Richard hadn’t read his Ellery Queen for nothing all those years, and he knew at once that if must heve been something she had done in her youth and that she really was the boy’s mother but didn’t dare to tell him, because if the boy got to know, he would scorn her for ever, and it would almost inevitably ruin the wedding. However, Richard couldn’t put his deductions to the test, because just at that moment the voice ceased, and a man from America was heard to inquire if he ‘wanted to hear the next exciting instalment, and that if he did, the best thing he could do was to eat Kosy Korn Kobs for breakfast. BELIEVE it or not, it was only at that moment that Richard realised he had actually been listening to a wireless. Inarticulate with wrath, he was in the act of turning it off when another voice, far more arresting and almost refined told him that he would now stand .by for what sounded like the National Hiccup, which would be broadcast a few seconds from now. Richard had never heard of a National Hiccup before, so his natural curiosity naturally got the better of his better instincts, and he let the few seconds go without moving. Then it turned out that the star of the National. Hiccup was Susy Sprightly, who seemed to be im a perfect dither of excitment about a recipe for Apple Sauce which she had just discovered. In a sort of daze, Richard then listened to a man informing him that if he wanted to cure the cold which was all but choking him to death, the thing to do was to get a bottle of Bush’s Great Ginger Remedy, which . would immediately set three thousand feet of oxygen of margarine sweeping over his (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) mucous membranes and his cold would be gone. Richard was wondering if there ,would be anything left of his throat, but let it pass when a young man who was obviously speaking with a pear in his mouth announced that Kid Boosey with catarrh accompaniment would now sing Down the Old Trail With My New Girl. When this was over, he was told by a bright young lady that if he wanted to keep his husband’s love, he would have to-do something about his complexion. Hawaiian Splendour was the cure for all those distressing skin complaints, Y this time, poor old Richard was a bit like Mr. Facing Both Ways. He felt that his integrity as an artist was being undermined, but he felt he really must. find out what was coming next. So he just stayed there, motionless, for another hour. During that time he was bombarded with tender enquiries about the state of liver, the size of his shoes, the necessity of buying a new chesterfield suite, the parlous state of his inside through not eating Farmer’s Famous Food, and the awful appearance his outsides would assume ,if ‘he didn’t start washing immediately with Summer’s Springtime Soap. He discovered that as he had not been eating Holly’s Wholemeal Bread there was little hope for his survival. He had been regaled by an enthralling little story all about a —

man who had crept out of his ancestral home at midnight, disgraced because he had shown the White Feather and had been dubbed a coward by the girl he loved, while his white-haired old father had never thought he would live to see the day. But all the time the man was in the secret service, and had,to pretend to be a coward in order to get into the enemy’s stronghold. What happened when he did get in, Richard didn’t know. He was told to wait till Wednesday before he found out. HEN the man who had brought the wireless came back. He said sorry Guv’nor, but it’s bin a mistake, This ’ere’s due next door. So he took the wireless away, little knowing that he had just played Fate in Richard’s life. Because the result of the whole episode was that Richard shaved his beard, sub-let his studio and took a job, He realised he had met his match. With an access of wholly unfamiliar humility, he admitted that all his imaginings were as nothing compared with the genius of the radio. So now he’s been taken on as copy writer for Brody’s Bacon Fat Co. Ltd., and life, no longer leisurely, is full of excitement. He writes down all ‘his imaginings, and what’s more, he gets paid for them. His heart is so much in his work that he has married a lady announcer, and all the children were born with a faraway look in: their eyes. =