It's So Nice Not Knowing You

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 652, 4 January 1952, Page 8

It's So Nice Not Knowing You

by

F.

ADAMS

‘Good: Neighbour policy is in where we come from the full swing. Teapots remain night and day at action stations oo ‘on the stove on the inside chance that somebody will drop in, On weekdays there’s usually a spafe pram with somebody’s baby in it being minded ' on the lawn, and on weekend mornings ~ gardens, remain undug and hens unfed whileth@*homebrew circulates with centrifugal. force. And you’re always asked to p \ given by your. immediate neighbours, if only (as cynics assert) so that you won’t be in a position later on to complain about the noise. It’s different hére. When we first came I used to get up early each morning. and clean the house and bake a batch of scones with the sinking feeling that somebody would Call. Nobody ever did. At, first I was inclined to be a little * truculent about it all. What could be wrong with the Adamses?. (Such a nice couple, ‘and al! those. well-brought-up-well, fine, healthy children.) Not my. / personal appearance surely, with me fully dressed and out of’ my slippers at ten o’clock in the morning? Not the children, their normal _. exuberance still tamed by the novelty of their surroundings, and who, thanks to my early start, went round with shining morning faces till quite late in the afternoon? . Then the simple truth dawned on me that this was simply a district where propinquity was not recognised as an open sesame to intimacy. I would probably never get to know my neighbours: NCE I accepted this I was conscious of a delicious sense of freedom, I enjoyed being able to walk to the tele- ‘ phone box ‘and back without having to ‘stop to pass the time of day (as if it —

didn’t pass quickly. enough already). I no longer bothered about getting an early start in the morning. After all, nobody was likely to. surprise me with a sinkful of dishes, since my own friends appeared only after due warning and many hours of wrestling with the bus time-table. It would take a qualified statistician to compute how many hours one saves in a year by cleaning the house only when one expects visitors. At any rate, I found myself with plenty of -time for sitting idly in the sun supervising the\ children’s mud-pies, for reading light novels, pottering in the garden. And for studying my neighbours, For you mustn’t think I’d_ stopped being interested in. neighbours as such. Other people ‘are, of course, always quite fascinating. But previously, having learnt all there was to. know about my neighbours in the first few. meetings, having sucked the juice out. of the orange, I was "compelled to sit like Galsworthy's White Monkey withthe: tind in my hand, too. polite’ to it away: Now, thanks to what. the land agent had , described as our elevated position. I was able to’ have without holding, tc receive without giving. I had a passport to travel incognito, incommunicado, through the strange byways of another’s habitat. ~ OF course, it can’t last, I tell myself, as I watch with the avid eye of the playgoer some little domestic drama being enacted in the Jones’s garden be-~ low. Sometimes I have a sneaking feeling that I. should be. keeping my eyes on my own work, but efter all I decide, as°I throw away the potato I’ve been peeling for the last five’ mifiutes, it isn’t as if I owed them any loyalty" after all, I Gent even know -the woman!’ Not that I we any actual objection to knowing them. The Joneses are, I -. -o

can state from secondhand knowledge, very nice people. They seldom raise their Voices to one another and when they do it’s only to say something like "Dinner’s ready, dgar!" She’s a much better housekeeper than I am, and I don’t mind admitting it since I shall not» be called upon to compete.. And their garden is streets ahead of ours, and so it ought to be, considering the, amount of time they spend in it -under our supervision. "Old Tom’s_ carrots are well up." I call from the ~kitchen vantagepoint to my husband, who has his feet up in the living-room (we can efford to be disrespect-ful-after all, it isn’t as if we knéw the people).

"He’s been out since eight weeding. them; and he’s planted out a ole long row of cabbages. I think cabbages." My husband only grunts. And later on’ when he’s doing his stint at the sink he’s quite likely to comment on the ‘fact that all the next-door beds are made and Mrs. Jones is doing the flowers. "Very artistic," he will say admiringly. And he does envy Jones the little frames his wife hangs his socks oh. "Guess he never has to wear ‘his socks with the heel under the instep." \ /ES, the Joneses live a much more . civilised life than we do, and we often feel a bit wistful about the fact ons ue

that we're always in ‘the kitchen when they’re in the garden. "Look at that!" says my husband bitterly of a Sunday afternoon, when we're still doing the dishes and Mr. Jones is dozing in one of those couth deck-chairs with a footrést and a paper over his face, (Truth or the Sports Edition? Hard to. tell at this distance. We get the glasses.) . "Well," 1 say ‘tartly, "they’ve only -got one child and he’s at boarding school," My husband, who thinks boardingschools brutal (and expensive) bends meekly to’ the sink: Later on, when I'm out in the kitChen again putting on the kettle I ‘shall see Mrs; Jones coming

out to join her husband in a little black basic with a single strand of : pearls and think virtuously of the number of woman-hours ‘I must Save a year by scarcely ever changing out of my -dirndl, : | IKE us, the Joneses have a fair number of weekend visitors, especially in the summer. There are also one or ‘two round-the-year standbys. whom I have difficulty in passing unsaluted in the ‘street because their faces are 80 familiar. ‘There’s Mrs. Jones’s aunt (or it might be Ais aunt, they both call her Auntie), who drives a very dashing A40 very dashingly and reads Vogue and the New Yorker. And several nice young people with that sporting unmarried look, whose voices are so impeccably low-pitched that their" conversation (till my lip redding improves) must be classed as unrewarding.¢ But I must say the Joneses treat their guests rather better than we do. Out rolls ‘the tea-wagon over the smooth sward (Tom mows that lawn at least once ad ‘week end sometimes oftener) and the hand-painted shower is whisked aside to reveal the silver tea service and the Spode cups and saucers: I always try tg keep our guests on the other side of the living-room. Otherwise they’re likely to have their noses glued to the window-pane and be exclaiming "Three kinds of cake!" admiringly while I prod them in‘the -back with my. tin tray and offer them a choice between i (continded on next page)

(continued from previous page) those two Adams spécialités de maison, biscuits-and-cheese or biscuits-and-to-mato. VERY: discs ifeciany? gt Tito it would be nice to know the Joneses. I would like a slip of that little blue creeper of hers, and it’s a pity when all the Adams. greens have been scratched up by the hens to see nextdoor’s silver beet going up to seed entirely disregarded. But this is more than cancelled out by the delicious detachment with which I was able to view Mr. Jones’s indisposition of last weer’ (We late there. | must be somepwr dawn. wasn’t ee fea er ‘Satirday, © "knew it couldn’t be really serious when the doctor didn’t come. Sure enough, he emerged wanly in dressing-gown and pyjamas to take the sun last Wednesday, so I deduced it was just that ‘flu that’s going round and round). It was sO nice not having to rush in with anxious enquiries or whip up a bow! of broth. And I sometimes feel that there are disadvantages to the ‘Joneses; in not ~ : er.

knowing us. I felt quite sorry for .Mrs. Jones yesterday as I watched her with little ineffectual heartfelt cries trying to shoo our hens off her strawberry bed, debarred by the mere lack of an introduction from coming round to my front door and demanding that something be done about it. But perhaps we haven’t so very long to enjoy our freedem from the responsibilities of neighbourliness. Already, as we stand together at the bus stop or pass on our way to the beach I feel that slight loosening at the corners of the mouth that will, I am afraid, in time lead to a smile, an indiscretion which might precipitate both families into the. sterilities of formal acquaintance. Let. me at all costs postpone it another ‘twenty years. Only then, I feel, when. the ranks of the’ little Adamses have been thinned by matrimony and mal-. nutrition (must at all costs get some. vegetables in next spring, though use-| less till the fowl-run’s fixed), only then will IT feel equal to the task of keeping up with the Joneses. Till then-it’s so | nice not knowing them. _