LETTER TO A FRIEND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 248, 24 March 1944, Page 8

LETTER TO A FRIEND

| A SHORT STORY |

Written for "The Listener" by

FRANK

SARGESON

. « » You ask me whether I found any material for writing while I was down in that seaside place. so perhaps I'd better tell you about how I met a boy named Paul. Then I can leave you to judge for yourself. I found Paul at my table one evening when I came in to dinner. He looked quite a nice sort of lad, thoughtful, rather shy, and quite good-looking with dark curly hair and a clear skin. I thought he couldn’t be more than 17, though he looked older in his doublebreasted suit. When our soup came, he crossed himself before he began to eat, and while we were eating, we told each other our Christian names, and he told me what school he went to. But apart from this, our appetites seemed to be too healthy to leave us much time to talk. After the meal I went out on the veranda with my pipe and he came with me. Somebody had left a copy of Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination on a chair, and he wanted to know if I’d read them. I told him yes, and he said he had, too, and his next question was a surprise. He wanted to know, did I agree that it was because the author was so very much interested in the problem of evil that he wrote horror stories? I said yes, I thought so. But I asked him whether he’d thought that out for himself. "Well, to be honest," he said, and he coloured rather, "I read it in a book." So I tried to put things right by saying that was O.K., years ago I'd probably done the same myself. Then he went on to say the problem interested him very much, because he wanted to be a priest, but his father had decided to take him into his business, It was on the tip of my tongue to remark that in that case he might have splendid opportunities to study the problem first-hand. But I didn’t. He was too nice a lad. Anyhow, his next remark was another surprise. "Yes," he said, "when you think of the war you can’t blame Edgar Allan Poe for writing those stories." I agreed, but this type of New Zealand schoolboy was rather a new one on me, and I found myself too busy with my thoughts to pay much attention while he told "me his father would be down the following evening, and was hoping to hire a launch so they could do some deayiore fishing. .. " * N EXT morning he was down to breakfast before me, and just crossing himself before he began his porridge. He had on a silk shirt and white trousers that went well with his dark hair. This, I notice, is the second time I’ve mentioned his clothes, and I suppose it’s because he was such a contrast to myself. I was making the most of my holiday, so I was going barefooted in knockabout trousers and an old shirt, and I used to get stared at in the dining-room. Everybody else would be all togged up, particularly for dinner in the evening. But unlike everybody else, Paul seemed to take no

notice at all of what I was wearing, and didn’t make me feel the slightest bit self-conscious. Anyhow, it was a wonderful morning, not a cloud to be seen, and a cool breeze just barely lifting the curtains. From where we sat we could look out and see the planes slowly rising and sinking above the trees that hid the aerodrome further down the coast. But none of them had so far come over our way, so the buzz was like something happening "off’-something important no doubt, but not yet claiming any serious attention. It was certainly a day, and I told Paul that as it was my last, I was going for a last walk away along the ocean beach. He said he’d like to come too, so after breakfast I went out and bought some onions and a loaf of bread at the store. I put them in my rucksack, then we went down on the beach and found quite a crowd collected there already. Near where we jumped down off the breakwater there were a pair of Yanks and a girl. She had on a two-piece sun-suit, a big hat, big round, black sun-glasses and tons of make-up. She was sitting absolutely still, holding on to the shaft of a beach parasol, and the Yanks were one on each side of her, one with his arm around her and the other with his hand on her leg. But sitting there so still and silent she didn’t seem alive. I thought she could easily have been a dummy figure in a set-up staged for the benefit of newspaper readers interested in the decay of morals, I said to Paul, "I believe that’s the way they do up a corpse for an American funeral." But, nice lad that he was, he said, "I beg your pardon." He didn’t know what I was talking about, and it seemed to me that even if he’d noticed the tableau, he hadn’t attached any point to it-which somehow seemed to me faintly surprising in view of what he’d said about the problem of evil. (Or is it, maybe, that my notions about the problem of evil are far too much tainted by my Puritan upbringing? I leave this question for you to decide). However, we were soon round the point and away from the crowd, and there ahead of us was the long empty beach with the sea on one side and the sandhills on the other. The tide was going out, and black-backed gulls were walking on the wet sand, some of them taking off now and then to carry up pipis to drop and follow down to the sand again. The glitter on the sea was dazzling, and high up above the gannets were flying in great curves, sinking and rising, catching the sun in a flash of (Continued on next page)

SHORT STORY (Continued from previous page) white, hovering with beating wings before they dive-bombed that glittering surface. I thought of Blake’s lines, ". . . the starry floor, the watery shore, is given thee till break of day. .. ." But away over at the back of the sandhills, above the trees, you could still see the planes. ... * * * ELL, as far as we could see into the distance there was nothing ahead of us but that empty beach. Yet we took all day over it and it wasn’t half long enough. Paul soon lost his shyness and was quite keen to tell me his ideas about this and that. Then when we got hungry we lit a fire, grilled pipis on hot stones until they opened, and ate them with the bread and onions. Paul said he had no idea that such a meal could taste so good. He ate heartily, but not, I thought, so heartily as I did-as you know my irsatiable interest in concrete things has always included things you can eat. But Paul at the age of 17 has developed a rfemarkable talent for the abstract. For instance, while we were lying stretched out after the meal, a citada flew on to my arm and sat there, stridulating and clicking its wings with tremendous gusto. I caught it and got Paul to look at the three extraordinary rubies they have in their heads, and he was interested, but not so very interested. He was much more interested in what he’d been telling me about the difficulties you get into if you separate philosophy from religion-God is liable to become an absolute, he said, quite remote from a world in which everything that we experience is relative.

"Yes," I said, as I let the cicada go, "I see what you teat. As felative beings everything depefids on our viewpoint. But an absolute being would have no viewpoint at all." He seemed pleased that I was capable of showing some intelligence in the matter, aid he went on, quite eagerly, to tell me some mofe. And I listened until a plane came over very suddenly, flying low over the sandhills, and passing right over tis before it went out to sea. As always, I was fascinated by the thing, and only became conscious that Paul had gone on talking when the noise had died away enough for me to hear his voice again. But somehow the plane had killed my interest in his theorising. It was brutal of me, no doubt, but I said that immediate things had always interested me most. And I quoted Blake, "Turn away no more; why wilt thou turn away? the starry floor. .. ." But, I went on to say that up in the sky Was the sort of immediate thing you were faced with these days, and you just couldn’t turn away. So he thought this over for a moment or two, then he said nearly all the boys at school wanted to be airmen, but he didn’t. He said that if he had to go to the war he’d try to get into the ambulance. As he’d done the previous even- | ing, he coloured a little as he said this, and I thought perhaps it was something he’d never said to anyone before. It affected me, anyhow, but I could only bring myself to say I thought it a fine

idea, and then I suggested we go further along the beach. .. . H ie * T. was close on dinnertime when we got back, and Paul’s father had atrived and was sitting on the veranda. Patil introduced us (he had to ask me for my nameé, and up till then I hadn’t known his) then he was told he’d better #6 and tidy himself up for dinner. I sat down for a rest, and his father talked to me. I don’t intend to tell you his conversation though. you know the sort of thing off by heart. There was nothing at all special about him. He sprang the usual awkward question on me what line was I in? And he said that after the war proPetty down in those. parts should be valuable, He thought the place was wasted as it was, but perhaps the Yanks might help us to make it more attractivehe could see fo reason why it shouldn’t become one of the most popular playgrounds of the Pacific. ... Listening to him I’d now and then catch myself feeling sorry for him. Or Paul would flash across my mind and I'd feel even sorrier for him. And maybe all the time it was myself I was feeling softiest for. There’s just one last point, though. There was salad for dinner, and tound the edge of the dish were chunks of raw carrot. Paul’s father used his fork to eat one of these. I was quite cheered up when I noticed Paul follow my exatnple and use his fingers, . ..