Golden Days in Christchurch

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 759, 5 February 1954, Page 6

Golden Days in Christchurch

HE old lady is almost tear- ‘| ful. "I've asked them again and again to do something, but they, don’t come." Her house in. Christchurch, proud to the. chimneys and edged with iron lace like a doily, gleams with new paint. Flowers) tingle, grass is juicy, the hedge is a long beast shorn and plump for slaughter. The hedge? But it straddles a.decayed wire fertce. You can’t see it. Yet the Quéen as she passes may notice a.little old body red with loyalty, white with pride but blue with a fear of being found out. Everything should be just right, the conscience as clean as a front doorstep. " * % tt HE silly: season is over. The firm’ , Which ‘trussed up a tractor in cellophane as a suitable gift for e farming friend has now draped it in bunting. Hairdressers are sitting pretty with a head. start. The Income Tax building. prompt as ever, is in the van with Royal motifs. A golden St. George shakes .a spear at a rival firm’s landscape-with-figures spread over its low roof: "Welcome to the Garden City." One bridge over the Avon is a study in juggling, co’oured balls caught in mid-air and crowns aswarm with flowers. Last-min-ute consternation: will the Clarendon Hotel be right royally decorated to house a Queen? The manager assures us that garlands, chastely looped, will be just the thing. He has them ready. Friday sees the last of the office boys standine On the pavement with tacks and bunting. while their ‘employers sweat aloft. the satin backs of their waistcoats looking wet with light. Sunday night everybody goes in to see what they've done-by car,

"[N Rhodes the days drop as softly as fruit from trees." We are not Mediterranean and can’t know | such felicity. But days during The Visit are filled with something other than ourselves. They seem somehow creative in a wide sense of what exactly it may be embarrassing to enquire. But of goodwill, good humour, unselfishness, there is no doubt. It is, that rare ‘occa[o> me ~ -_- ie

sion which people can feel is not somehow: engineered to fill hotels, shops, someone else’s pocket. Of course, the souvenirs are there, biscuit-tins, badges, bottle-tops, But they’re irrelevant this time. This can’t be washed off or broken. It takes strange forms, callecting pictures, touching cars, the ~aging for another gawk ("We want the Queen’’). But it springs from an awkward, simple affection that is too selas ae! tate 8 i> en on

dom tapped and yet too often lavished upon unworthy objects. Here now is someone who merits this affection which not all can feel or will admit, which flowers inarticulately in most, If some confuse it with the grosser forms of idolatry that is a pity. It may be intellectually humbling, but it exists, how it exists! * * * N- Christchurch the days hit a_ golden apogee. The week-end we spend at the beach, toasting happily, curling up at the edges. Travellers drop in with their tales of Queen and Duke borne along on waves. of excitement and of sympathy. "She must be fuil up with it!" The radio is clogged: with speeches and shouting. (Should the word "truly" be banned from our _ lexicon?) Sky is like a polished plate. Howto

convey the serenity ‘of park .and trees, the pleasgnt sobriety of

stone, suburDias trimeness? It’s no lie, Christchurch is sum-mer-lovely and expectant. : * ae * \VE stroll behind the first jittery, chattery crowd. This is the test. Will they unbutton? Christchurch crowds have a reputation for. being aloof. They laugh when a boy in a Hillary headgear drops his sandwiches on the street and carefully replaces — a ee ee

them in their greaseproof, paper. Over the way children dance behind the barbed wire of a concentration camp, a second-hand car dealer's yard. God. and Mammon are juxtaposed: the chapel board prays "God Bless Our Queen" against the hotel’s gusty "Here’s.a Health Unto Her Majesty." Then it’s as if the bow is suddenly bent, the waxed string taut and. quivering. Swifter than the pard, the Prime Minister runs the gauntlet in his black limousine getting an ironic thrust or two. (No matter. who he is, he will always provide a release for self-consciousness; for who does. not feel just a little foolish gathered here to yell approvingly at someone? Now if it were at Lancaster Park .-...).. Then cheering sudden and fierce. "Tiny children are hoisted, hats removed, flags‘ unfurled. A yell goes off in ‘your ear like a bomb. A car bearing a‘ wellknown picture floats by, paradoxically in a flash, an exposure at a twefity-fifth of a second, But the. picture was moving with those stylised gestures that are the only sensible way to ration ¢harm. Everyone has shouted at her. or ‘him. A personal shout, an instinctive movement to establish a link. Did. eyes meet? Perhaps. The noise goes |rolling up the street, the roar of an avalanche: falling away. We turn for home, for tea, with something other than oursélVes to talk about. "Isn’t she beautiful, really lovely, eh?’ "I say, he’s alittle bit of all right." The welcome has been magnificent. In fact, so pleased are we that everybody seems pleased with us that we keep on trying to do better. * * }T is difficult not to join the crowd which gathers about the garlanded hotel that evening. The Royal Musical Society has massed its chair outside on the scented river-bank to sing "Who ‘Comes "This Way? The May Queen ‘comes. Let her path be spread with roses "w ss ses red." And when the Qi and" ‘the Duke. appear on > there is’ one tremendous roar and'a swoop.of. pale colour blurred by dusk ‘as almost a hindred choristers pick up their long skirts and run to a vantage point, a choreographer’s dream. The crowd lingers, grows. Will they come out again? Children perch in embrasures. A man says thoughtfully; "You know, it really looks just like a prison. Matter of fact, that’s about what it is, We. can’t get in and she can’t get out." Much cheering and clapping, songs like "Every Nice Girl Loves a Sailor." But the few attempts to chant "We want the Queen" are quickly shushéd: we’ are on our best behaviour. The patience of it all! Thousands wear the "warm night on their brows, talking quietly: And when They appear for the last ‘time, there is a transfiguration of face quite startling, an urgency to touch and _hold ‘something for which FI can find" no name. Police grinning, happier than I've.éver seen them-never underestimate the power of a woman. 7 HE ‘day of- the great drive through ‘the city is for us a picnic. It is_ wonderfully fine and so we go to Har-

per Avenue, which runs clean through park, .rolling and tree flanked where 16,000 = schoolchildren are gathered on one side of the road. For hours they ferment behind a hedge, bubbling with soft drink and high spirits, a headily -innocent combination. Then "comfort stations," pitched like Bedouin tents and visible above the hedgerow, are advertised, not disguised; by a long scream of bunting. We camp on. the other. side under the trees, thousands of us, 2 crowd sunburnt and ripe with good humour. As the hour draws near we find a position presided over by a man as dark © as a gipsy and with a tribe of women and children. They are. all seated, under threat of having their heads bashed in: if they stand up. "Siddown!" He has managed to get others to co-operate for several yards along. He is very cheerful in .a_ sinister sort of way. And I am very grateful for anyone who organises with good humour. Here the children are the show, their enthusiasm as keen as a knife in the heart. And, thrown in, a clown to take their pictures. The bunting should look well spread out by CinemaScope, | a ne * ND so it goes. Sun to burn, as it. were. ‘Days of © washed brilliance. To the Hospital where » children, receive them in .a | purity . of silence. To our sinewy Gothic Cathedral made splendid by. fanfares and trebles soaring. With worshippers of another kind to "the, trots" at Addington. To a factory where great webs turn into nylons. (Here an onlooker found a use for that empty car piloted by a grinning chauffeur.

"Shell have her nylons in that,". as the cavalcade passed). To a garden party to nibble strawberries, and meet, well, some of the people. As I write they are still here, enjoying, a night at the movies on the eve of their going. As you read, they will have gone from the country altogether. In Christchurch I believe they got the welcore

they deserved, spontaneous, overwhelm‘ing, but tactful. Their youthful charm: ensured the spontaneity, the Queen’s dignity verging on shyness coupled with the Duke’s ‘smiling vigour and sincerity gained from the crowds the respect the breeds a complementary dignity in» enthusiasm. There was no fleck of illhumour, Some people realised, . perhaps for the first time, the warmth that car

lie in an abstraction when you meet the human beings from whom it is drawn like breath. And so, having come ‘to us with grace, perhaps they will remember us as having received them with the grace, sincere if a little unpolished, of those who work long in gardens, sit under trees and think our children wonderful.

Jim

Walshe