THINGS ONE REMEMBERED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 355, 12 April 1946, Page 33

THINGS ONE REMEMBERED

F you get a kick out of celebrities, Press conferences are pretty exciting. To sit for an hour and listen to Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, privileged by virtue of a reporter’s notebook to stare as much as you like, is a very enjoyable way of passing the time. To write about it afterwards is not as easy. You feel that there should be some big, clear, vivid impression, but there isn’t: just a lot of little things you’ve noticed. Some of them-that Lord Louis is almost incredibly tall, that he has thick, black hair without even a fleck of grey in it, and an unlined face-are obvious from photographs. Some, such as the fact that his hands are as well moulded and strong-looking as his face, and that when he sits he really relaxes-almost liesin ‘the chair, aren’t. Looks Well in Uniform Lady Mountbatten is one of the few women I have seen who looks really well in an essentially unbecoming uniform. She’s small, though perhaps she only looks small beside her husband, her features are attractive rather than conventionally beautiful, and she gives the impression of tremendous but controlled vivacity. She arrived a little late, apologised, wished the days and nights were longer, said she’d just been told she’d "got to make gq speech at this St. John’s thing," shook hands with everybody, sat down, took off her hat, adjusted her hair, said "Everybody please smoke if you want to" and lit a cigarette-practically all in one breath. She didn’t seem to relax at all. She chain-smoked from a plain unembossed silver cigarette case, and used a lighter. She played with a pencil and wrote frequently on an inadequate piece of paper. Once when she borrowed our pad to write a note to the aide we got the full and exclusive benefit of four smiles-one when she asked us for it, one when we gave it to her, one when she gave it back, and one when she gave us the note to pass on. She wore no jewellery but a plain silver wrist-watch and a diamond ring. Story Nobody Got Lady Mountbatten left most of the talking to her husband, and what she. did say, her tribute to the Red Cross, or to St. John’s, her statement that the children of Britain were better cared for during the war than ever before, her recommendation of the film Burma Victory and the way she winced when somebody mentioned Objective Burma will all have been faithfully recorded long before this goes to press. Just as she was leaving, somebody asked her if she was interested in our deep-sea fishing and she said: "T’ll leave that to my husband. He’s never caught a swordfish. I have." But she had to hurry away, so that is a story

nobody got.

S.P.

McL.