TIME CREDIT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 30

TIME CREDIT

| Written for "The Listener"

by

J. S.

HEPBURN

HERE was really no story in Douglas Mason — not in Douglas Mason alive, anyway. About Douglas Mason — dead, though, there was this very interesting fact-that he skipped. out of this life with 25 minutes 12 seconds up his sleeve. Alive he was just a kid at Kilbirnie, pictures on Saturdays, holidays at Plimmerton, Wellington College, first eleven, Customs Department, eighth reinforcements, Tunisia, Sangro, Cassino, R.S.A: badge, and a crook stomach. But dead he showed a profit of exactly 25 minutes 12 seconds; that and a few quid in the Post Office was his balance when a taxi collected him one night as he jumped a Karori Park tram at four minutes to five. I'd known him when a Spandau or an eighty-eight could have got him any hour of day or night-but, no, he has to go and get it at four minutes to five on the road to Karori. I’d hauled him off the tracks at Bab-el-Louk station in Cairo when it was just a drunken toss-up whether we both’ went under the train-but his curtains had to come in a taxi on the road to Karori. Douglas Mason was no hero and he wasn’t smart. I know some fellows who have made hundreds since they came home, but all Douglas made was 25 minutes 12 seconds. Of course, he’d also helped to make some oppressed nations free, and he’d made a home and a fairly good garden. Whether or not his home and his garden were any better for the extra 25 minutes 12 seconds he spent in them I don’t know. Maybe he could have spent another 30 years round and about if he’d done as I told him, and waited until that Karori tram stopped at nights instead of jumping off it six seconds beforehand. I know, because I often used to ride on the same tram and I used to count seconds after Douglas jumped off. It was always six when the car stopped. I was only up to three the night the cant a8 him. BA FUNNY, you know, when you think back to how fellows in the Army overseas used to figure out what they’d

do when they got home. And all that happened when we did get home was that I used to work out how much time Douglas would save in a year if he saved six seconds a day for five days a week. I never could remember my figures from one night to the next, so I used to work it out again every time. Five times six are thirty-half a minute a week-but it was better to call it twenty-four seconds a week, because we usually stayed in town for a beer on Fridays. Even if he jumped off the tram before it stopped then, I didn’t count that. It’s funny the things you figure out sometimes, It always kept me going until I came to my stop, anyway. I see a lot of people in this town who jump off the trams before they stop, and they always remind me of Douglas now. It’s only just saving a few seconds, but they certainly do mount up. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make sense, when you think that people have been away from home for perhaps nine or ten hours and yet they jump off moving trams just to get home a few seconds earlier. You can’t do anything at home or in the garden in those few seconds, but maybe it is worth something when you add it up over a long period. At the end of this life you have gained quite a lot of time. That’s if a taxi doesn’t get you too soon. % % Es [DOUGLAS MASON seemed different overseas. He was always fairly slim, of course, and rather serious, but he looked different when his face and neck and hands were brown, with a grey jersey sticking out under his battledress. He kept his straight brown hair. shorter in the Army, too. There was always that serious touch about him, though, He was the kind of fellow, even in the Army, that everyone called Douglas, mever Doug. He became a corporal and ‘then a sergeant at the finish. I reckon he’d have done better, too, if he’d cared less what people thought about him. . I don’t suppose he was what you’d call

an outstanding soldier, but there were thousands like him. They didn’t get medals, only the Africa Star and Italy Star and so on. He wasn’t a good drinker, either, really-always swore too much in an unaccustomed sort of way. Women didn’t seem to worry him a great deal, except that he made you feel uncomfortable, and even a little sick, when he talked about them. Too intense, perhaps. Douglas Mason and I were thrown together a lot, and we became sort of cobbers. Honestly, I don’t really know whether I ever liked him. Maybe that’s a queer thing to say about @ fellow who rode in the same three-tonner with you for years and shared your bivvy. I suppose I did like him, but thinking back on it now I realise that we never talked about anything really important. Only what someone said to someone else, or what a great driver so-and-so was, of what we thought of Ities, or Tommies, or Poles. But I must have liked Douglas, because when we went into town together I often left early with him when I could see that he was getting crook or something on the beer. Other times I’d go on the bash without him, but then afterwards I'd feel I'd let him down somehow. But it was none of his business. I wasn’t going to give him any extra marks for not drinking as much as me. He just couldn’t take it, that was all. After we met again in civvy street he never drank except on Friday nights. Saturdays he’d stick in his garden while I went down to the pub. I think he just wasn't interested in other blokes. He_ had a much better garden than me, of course; but I had a rotten section for a start, anyway. : ats o* DON’T do mental arithmetic for the last two stops on the way home now. After I pass that bend, though, I often think, well, what good were his seconds every day to him? What was the use of saving 25 minutes 12 seconds? Maybe it was even a loss, because he’d be that much early on the other side, and waiting 25 minutes 12 seconds in a kind of suspension may be like waiting for all eternity. There mightn’t be any time there. I don’t know. Why the hell couldn’t he have waited until the tram stopped? You can’t do anything in six seconds. He was too intense. I doubt if he consciously intended to save time by jumping that tram as it slowed down at the bend. He just did it because that was the way he was made. At work he was the same-always straining at what he was doing, but never quite sure if it was good. It never got him anywhere in the department. ss I’ve read somewhere that a _ crook stomach makes you nervous, of maybe it was the other way round. I taink Douglas’ Mason was just plain nervous. We went home together several nights . a week for over a year, but we only talked about the department, and his garden, and sometimes about what other chaps we'd known in the Army were doing. When he came to get off, jumping at the bend, he'd say: "See you later." Damn it, he’d have been better to have stopped one at Cassino. He’d have. been a hero then. x Instead he goes out in a street accident. And maybe he had to wait 25 minutes 12 seconds before he could go over the other side properly. Whatever happened over there, I'll bet he turned out to be in the wrong. Some chaps always do things for the best and they always turn out to be in the wrong. feontinued on next page)

Short Story (continued from previous page) Like the time in our crowd when everyone went crazy on playing chess and Douglas brought back a lot of books and a set of really good chessmen from Alexandria on his leave. Only, when he got back they were spinning pennies again and nobody played chess any more. As I said before, there was no story in Douglas Mason. There might be a story in what he did with all those 1512 seconds he saved up. But I’m trying not to think about that, and in any case I sometimes think you can’t save time. Certainly doesn’t do you any good. Just last Saturday afternoon some of us were talking about Douglas Mason during our four-to-six session in the pub. One said: "Poor cow-he wasn’t a bad sort." Another said: "Crook luck, that-just when he’s getting settled down again, too." Another: "A man ought to take things easier and live longer. This jumping off trams doesn’t pay." And another: "He wasn’t a bad sort, either." I didn’t say anything, but I was the only one there who knew that Douglas Mason had saved 25 minutes 12 seconds on this life. I didn’t feel like telling the others that about him.