The Waves Wash Twice

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 378, 20 September 1946, Page 20

The Waves Wash Twice

Written for "The Listener"

by

S. P.

McL.

T’S funny how something you’ve buried a lohg time ago will suddenly stand up again and slap you in the face. I suppose you ought to be grateful for it. Be glad to regain something you thought you’d lost. But no matter how often it happens to me it’s a nasty shock. When I bury my dead I like them to lie down, so I wasn’t glad to see Sally. Sally belongs way back in the past. I’d thought she was very dead and now here she was, obviously glad to see me. You've got to have a quick and accurate memory to make out well at moments like these and I haven’t, Everything comes back to me when it’s far too late. With Sally it was different. She seemed so little changed. That couldn’t be true, of course. When you’re young your mind doesn’t change, it turns inside out. No intelligent person is the same at 19 as at 17, and Sally was certainly intelligent. I thought-I must be getting insensitive. It’s just that she looks the same. The idea worried me until about halfway through the usual "do you rémembers." Then I saw the reason for it. Sally is English and she has that calm confidence so irritatifig to New Zealanders. Even as a very scared and home sick little girl she’d had it. It made her generally unpopular at school and éven her friends were discomfited by it. Some people said it was because she was clever and knew it. Some said it was plain conceit. I knew it wasn’t either. It was because she was English. ;There was such a lot of that serene confidence in Sally that'if you saw it you couldn’t see past it. It would always be there, so that for me Sally would always be the same.

Once I had the thing straightened in my mind I was free to listen to her, She was saying, "I’m going home on Saturday on the Rangitiki." It was obvious she didn’t want to go. I couldn’t think of anything to. say, so I tried to combine sadness with sympathy in a smile, I said, "It'll be nice to see your people again. It’s been a long time." She said "Yes" without much enthusiasm. I felt I was being clumsy, so I said, "I'll have to be getting back to work now." She said, "Will you come to tea on Friday?" and I said, "Yes, of course. I'd like to," and then I left. She called after me "Bet’s coming, and Noeline and Nancy," and I said "Good, it’ll be just like old times." I regretted that instantly. It was probably tactless and certainly silly. It wouldn’t be like old times. It never is, When a thing is over, it’s over. You can’t go back. I had plenty of time, but I hurried all the way to work. MET Noeline, Bet and Nancy at the bottom of the hill and we walked up to Sally’s place. For a while we tried to talk and joke as we uséd to, walking up to Sally’s place., But it was no good. When a thing is over, it’s-over. So we gave that up and asked one another what we were doing now and felt, suddenly ashamed that we had to ask. I thought, not even the past can be as dead as that. But it was. I thought, I’ll go home. I'll say I’m sick. I won’t make a mockery of old times for old times’ sake. But I didn’t. I kept on walking and then Bet was talking in a detached way about something impersonal. I listened carefully. The best way to lay a ghost is to think hard about something else. Bet was saying: "I’m doing a thesis on Poetic License." This was right. This was Bet. We always used to know Bet’s projects as well as she did by the time they were finished. "What do you have to do with it?" I said. "Find inaccuracies and argue whether or not they’re justified." "And do you find them, and are they?" I asked, This was safe, this would see us out at least till we got to Sally’s. : "There are quite a lot — mostly in second-rate poets. I argue on general principle that they are not justified. Ater all, you can’t tell a big truth by telling a little lie, can you?" "The truth, the whole truth," said Noeline. "That’s right," Bet said, "I read one yesterday: ; The past will always come again, _ And you'll be as you were before, Say time and tide wait not for man; That wave will wash these sands once _ ‘more. "Well, that’s silly-anyone can see that’s wrong-a similar wave certainly but not, definitely not, the same wave." "Or," Nancy said, "even if it were exactly the same wave, it wouldn’t wash (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) exactly the same place. So that even if the past repeated itself exactly-it never does, but even if it did — you wouldn’t be the same person as before, would you?" I said, "I don’t know, but the same thing ‘happening to you again might change you back into what you were before, mightn’t it?" And I rang Sally’s doorbell loudiy before she could answer. ALLY took us straight into the big drawing-room that felt like a church and had always made us want to whisper. I thought, how absurd we were then. It’s really just far too big and dark. I said to Noeline, "Sally hasn’t changed much, has she?" But I was speaking so softly she didn’t hear. Bet spoke to me and called me by a school nickname no longer applicable -long since forgotten. I didn’t notice at the time, but I remembered afterwards. 5

The evening passed pleasantly enough. Sally patronised us all in her gently irritating manner. Bet tried to convert everyone to Communism as she used to, though I knew she didn’t really care one way or the other. Now Noeline acted cynical, though I knew she’d grown out of that too. I_thought, we’re putting up a good performance for Sally. Reenacting ourselves as she’ll remember us. We can’t say good-bye as strangers. It was not until after I had furiously defended Noel Coward against Sally who still didn’t like him and realised that I really was indignant, though Coward is a very dead love, that I knew it wasn’t a performance at all. Because of Sally, who would always be the same, we were not only acting the’ people we used to be, for a while we were them. We stopped at the bottom of the hill, going home, for a polite conversation, of which I only remember two. sentences. Bet said, "Sally hasn’t changed a bit, has she?" and Nancy said, "What’ did you say was the name of that poet?"