CALAMITIES COME IN THREES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 345, 1 February 1946, Page 12

CALAMITIES COME IN THREES

Written for "The Listener" by ‘

DUKIE

HE man in blue looked depressed. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Another murder?" "Murders! That’s all the average person thinks about. Something sensational: thwarted love, the eternal triangle, and then a_ beastly, gory murder. How they lap it up!" "What is wrong then?" "Just an accidental drowning. A little girl playing near the water. She fell in and the little boy with her panicked and didn’t run for help soon enough. That’s all. There'll only be about three lines about it in the paper. It’s tragic, but not sensational. And there’ll be two more of ’em." "What? Two more children drowned, you mean?" "Oh, not necessarily children, and not necessarily drowned. Two more sudden deaths, I mean." "Why two more?" "These things always run in threes. You just wait and see. Someone will get run over, or poisoned, or something. It always happens that way." "So you think that everything runs in threes?" "Yes, most of them do. Sudden deaths in particular. If someone gets drowned, someone else will commit suicide or some such thing." HE waves of depression almost engulfed me as well. "You don’t think that your job is a happy one then?" "Happy? How can it be? We’re surrounded by misery and crime on every side. We risk -our lives at times to keep people safe. We go into gambling dens and worse." "Isn’t that exciting?" I interjected, but he went on as though I had not spoken. "And what happens? The very people we are trying to protect hate and revile

us. Crowds, given half a chance, hiss ‘scab’ and ‘dirty copper’ at us. Certainly the majority of the New Zealand crowds are not so very bad, but just look at what is happening in Sydney."

"What?" "Why, if a policeman tries to arrest anyone, the crowd turns on the man doing his best to enforce law and order. They can’t even get men to join the force over there, conditions are so. bad." SAID nothing, but I was sure his face had grown longer and his gloom deeper even as we had been talking. "Yes, conditions are bad-and getting worse. People seem to think that we invented the laws ourselves, so that we (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) could go out and nab someone for breaking them. No one stops to think what it’s like where lawlessness runs riot, or just what we mean to the community. Do you realise-he was now really angfy-that mothers even frighten their children by saying, ‘If you don’t be good the policeman will get you!’ Turning us into bogey-men, mind you! It’s no wonder, perhaps, that when they grow up they hate us. Stupid, that’s what it is, when all the time we are every law-abiding citizen’s best friend." "But you think everything runs in threes? As we were talking about children, I suppose the same thing applies in their case. If you collect one lost child you end up by finding three?" "Yes. Not altogether, mind you, but one after the other. And most of them just sit and howl. No matter what we do they sit and howl. That’s their silly mothers for you. The kids think we'll eat them, of course." "And what about breaking and entering. Does that go in threes?" "Threes? That goes in three hundred and threes-and then starts again. As long as women leave purses on dressing tables and beds, and jewellery ‘and money hanging about in their usual careless fashion, we'll have breaking and entering. omen are thoughtless and stupid where valuables are concerned."

"Are you a woman-hater?" I asked. "Me? No! Why should I be?" "Oh, no reason. I just wondered." The telephone rang and’ he reached a gloomy arm towards it. "Yes. Where? Did you ring for a doctor and an ambulance? I'll be there right away," and he grabbed his helmet and coat. "Excuse me! A bad motor accident. What dia I tell you? That’s the second. There’s one more to come yet," he flung at me as he hurried away. "But is anyone actually dead this time?" I called. Only the clip-clop of his departing feet answered me. -EEE--->-------=_z_-=z_{]_[{]__---- ==