"Any News, Uncle?"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 370, 26 July 1946, Page 14

"Any News, Uncle?"

EING once presented with a volume of Stacey Aumonier’s short stories, and reading it through without a break, I decided even after such a concentrated dose that there were very few "misses" among them, and that most of the collection could be mentioned in the same paragraph, even if not in the same breath, as O. Henry. Ome of Stacey Aumonier’s stories, "A Source of Irritation," I heard from 4YA, dramatised in a BBC production. It was a straightforward story with a racy narrative and a minimum of conversation, and _ it adapted well for radio. It concerned an old man, working in the fields year iin and year out, who was driven nearly desperate by his niece’s daily enquiry, "Any news, uncle?" One day in the fields, a spectacular adventure befell the ancient, which included his abduction in an enemy plane, his adventures in the front line, his astonishing return home just in time for tea and the girl’s question, "Any news, uncle?" In a delightful climax, the old man rends her verbally for making useless and silly remarks, and not one word of his "news" escapes his angry lips. In this production (whether it was the fault of the author or of the adapter I don’t know) there was certainly another "source of irritation" for the listener, the fact that, knowing no German, the old man was able to pick up useful information about the enemy, due entirely to the fact ‘that they chose to reveal their plans in his hearing ‘while evidently conversing among themselves in English. This seemed so obliging and incongruous on their part that it was immediately suspicious, and we could have done without this piece of neat detective-work on the part of the hero, since it quite spoilt the plausibility of an already incredible tale. :