4
I
THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1955.
DID IT HAPPEN? ... by H. E. BATES
The INDUSTRIOUS
N the summer of 1944,
in Calcutta, five of
1s
lived in a little
room at the top of a
ANTS
jute mill: McAlister, Ogden, pinned himself against the wall Kerensky, Whiteside. myself.
7
wherever he happened to be ari cowed, alarmed and petrined. A
thin bony figure of 40, in Ser I flew into the hot black vice shorts with angular knees in crisp red hairs, ness of India on a night in covered June, fresh to a big strange strode aggressively past him and presently 3 purging Scottish city, knowing nobody, voice was scouring the air. needing friends. An iron
"All Where the hell is All staircase, like a fire escape Russell-Pilot Officer Russell! went up the outside of the All-see this chit?-I'll stuff it jute mill to the third floor, down your damn throat if you and as I climbed it, lugging don't sign it. Here, boy, here
All chits must be signed-out!" Out of my way! my bed-roll, 1 could feel the you see? metal railing still warm on Russell! Barrington where the
hell has Russell gone? my hands,
"And who are you?" he said each comer of the room la
Four beds, to me. "What do you want?" was a camp bed.
ghostly
with
mosquith
net-
ling, each under
its naked elec-
tric light, and then
B
fifth,
alone, in the
centre; the ve beds equidistant in isolation mak- ing
pattern
д
like a five on a playing card.
The centre bed
empty.
was
Another story -- which
pries, by "famans utopia FACT for FICTION. THE test 11-ear YOU detect the fiction from the fact
Americans, In three others the Ogden, Kerensky and Whiteside were all reading, lying on their sides.
"Kullo," I said. I liked to be friendly with, Americans. "Good evening."-I gave my name. "Any idea which bed is mine?"
Only Nobody answered.. Kerensky, a big, yalow-haired man with a shaven neck, made a stiff reluctant gesture with his head towards the centre bed and then turned over, propping him self on the other elbow.
"I'm supposed to report to McAlister," I said. Where could find him? He's supposed
to fix me up."
"Out, I guess."
That was Ogden.
"Maybe on a session,"
That was Whiteside.
I went out, shutting the door.
"Leave that damn door open!" somebody yelled.
It was not until morning that, I found McAlister. His bed had not been slept in.
Petrified
At the last moment, not quite enough, he looked at quickly the tabs on my shoulder. There were three of them: exactly like his own.
When I told him who I was his pale
beady eyes jumped about between reddish Bds, the whites bloodshot with sleepless- ness, and he said:
It
"Some of these little nurses that come down from Bumma" in his, hard, cryptic Scottish way be always pronounced Bummare a bit of all right. Some of them are quite fast wee And they're hungry too lassies. when they come down after being up there so long-they're very hungry, I'm telling you.""
"And are you hungry, too?" I said once, or do you always prefer to be thirsty?
I could see he didn't like that: but he had a good reply.
M
"I don't have to be hungry, he said. They know they can't move without me. If they want to fly back to Bumma It's me they have to see. And if they don't want to fly back to Bimma -you know, not for other day and a night or two they know who to come to."
· His seanions
Perhaps a seberer man would not have confided these things. But McAlister, as Whiteside had remarked, was food of sessions:" His sessions consisted of seeing the dawn up with fellow Scots- leather-skinned mastly me jufe-men from Dundee, and very Occasional Americans, bottles of Scotch and rye.
over
It was after one of these sessions that he said to me:
車
From the window of our crowded little room on the third floor I had seen, her waiting for some time in the compound, in the blazing sum
“Thank you very much," she said as she climbed in. "I was beginning to, feel quite faint out there,"
The fare
Somehow I had gained the impression that she was Scots... and I told her so.
Drawing by KOOLMAN
"Scots? Don't insult me," she ad. "I'm English-English to nothing going up there for days."
the bone. Scots, my. God.“
"Don't like the
Scots?" "Loathe them," she said, "This place is full of them. Och! and aye! and will ye and will ye not-I hate them
It seemed to me that there was possibly more in har affronted English voice than a
H. E. Batex HIS novels have been
translated intp 1S languages." His short stories stand high in the list of dollar earners When he Joined the RAF in the war he was given the job of writing short stories about Air Force life. They became famous under the per-name of 'Flying 'Officer X. everybody knew I was really Squadron Leader H. E. Bales, Before publishing his first novel tai 30) he had been a Journalist, a clerk, and on the dole. Now he is nearly 50. married, with two sons and two daughters, and lives in Kent
Bat
"Who says so?"
"He does. Lord God Almighty. McAlister."
She did not look merely tired She, too, had and dispirited. made a bad beginning, and now the ants were in her brain.
"Better drink," I said,
come and have 扯
In the not shadiness we stood there glaring. His eyes were bloodshot with hatred...
I was ready, I drove down to the airfield I checked myself planes that were standing there. A sergeant with a heap of lug- age pointed to a Warwick and said:
in and then looked at the air
HAVE FUN.
SAYS ELSA
By Douglas Clark
London:
It is a mysterious affair, this
Was
throwing Elsa a stately
T 28, The Boltons they quarrel In 1951 he Duchess are busy polishing the compliment. "We And her silver. For the Douglas charming, and she GMAALSES US Fairbankses are expecting with the funny stories she another distinguished suddenly a terrible froidcur yet
invariably has to tell" visitor.
Then
at
each avoiding the other Chunky little Elsa Max- parties, each stiffly surrounded
by her separate coterie. well is coming to stay.
The hostess with the
mostes on the ball is trip-
tinent
Aloof
D
ping over from the Con. Was there a reconciliation last spring? Many thought so.. to attend, among other things, a London lun. Noel Coward, it was said was
tactful cheon which will officially the exquisitely launch her autobiography, "I there were the Duchess and
between But
in July, presto,
Elsa at another party, coolly Married The World."
aloof again in opposite corners.
It will be a worthwhile And the reason for it all? Elsa I managed to
sight to see Miss Maxwell is wordly uninformative. take her into a
"I will only say one thing "I think that's us, str. That's bouncing into The Boltons. where bugs if you're going to Akyab." bar
I rate her, at 72, in phy. about the Duchess. I think she did not bite us.
"I thought we were in a Dak."sique and character, the was wrong-terribly wrong-cot After three drinks
to have accepted the respon- "No, sir," the sergeant said. she The Warwick's the Akyab air-nearest human approach to sibility of histors. That is all I I thought would cry. In- plane. But there's a Beachcraft rubber ball. Standing just have to say "
there-I think perhaps that'll be over 5ft. weighing 14st., stead, she gripped geing, too."
What is it that has ted 4lb., she is quite round. .the
this tireless little Californian, arms of the
I went back to movement con- And she bounces ceaseless- unaided by the advantages of wicker chair and trol office, managed to change
"birth ог beauty, to her u- said:
my airplane and then tew inly.
of "rivalled position as queen "He just does it to frustrate the Beacheraft to Akyab.
Miss Maxwell is not to be party-givers, as boss of the me. He knows he could get me
numbered, like the
orange, social whirl? away tomorrow £-but I've been
among California's more taste- had one and I won't be had
less exports. She is a girl of again. Not by him, anyway,
She started Not if the war goes on till
rich, fill favour. Itte.
а as everybody knows. Dcomsday."
humble
pianist in a silen: cinema; but the pianola is more in her line. She
non-stop and noisy.
"I think somebody," I said "will have to speak to our friend McAlister."
Next day, I walked McAlister's shady,
"There's a wee nursie named Margaret coming down from Chittagong next week. She's not much to look at but..you know it's often the ugliest lassies that general hatred of Scotsmen and office and said "You know you should have have the nicest figures.
She's I said: beer, here yesterday? You know not much of a face, but she's a that? Everybody was expecting nice plump pair of
"you."
"I was here yesterday."
"Maybe. maybe," he "But did you report? Did you report?"
said.
that
"Anything going wouldn't Chittagong?"
"Presumably include a friend McAlister?" I broke in on this catalogue of
"Don't talk about him," she the hidden virtues of nurses to
said. "Don't mention the man. remind him that he had pro- He was supposed to pick me mised me a fight to Akyet.
"I'm minding
he said, up this morning and give me a it," "but you'll have to be patient. ft-but I suppose I forgot to I've got nothing but Warwicks -Buarantee the fare."
"It was late." I tried to speak going over for a day or two. And calmly. There was," I said, they're half eaten by ants again. nobody to report to. I couldn't You wouldn't want to be bunged in one of the old Warwicks,
find you"
"I thought you and McAlister were old friends," I said. spoke as if"
into fan-cooled
up
Over
Blinding dust
Two hours later we How in a white faring basin of dust to touch down by a sok- ing ruin of something that was blanketing the sun. Heat struck at the landing alterat like the blast of a furnace and a corporal who opened the door said:
"Mind your step: Got the grill full on. Somebody dropped the to fat in the fre."
"A Dak this morning and a Beachcraft this afternoon," he said. "Why? You want to ge to Akyab?"
"Put Margaret on the Dak," I "They never
them.
said.
"He
"We were," she said. "In fact
Raw nerves
His normally red baldish head
IN
is
In the swim.
go
TN the social swim, some
under and others float life- forges
Perhaps the answer is that she does for the International smart set what Wilfred Pickles does for the British proletariat.
She gives the depressed class of the Almanach de Gotha a sense of importance and well being.
She has the trick of investing her party gimmicks with enor-· mous meaning.
a
1. stood on hot, blinding dust,
She can turn the act of mille watching, at the other end of lessly: Miss Maxwell
ing champagne from the udders smoking skeleton of an airplane. the runway, the unrecognisable onward with a sturdy crawl.
of an artificial cow at New With "What was it?" I said.
endless energy she York's Waldorf-Astoria into
Lions. hunts out her
("Elsa gesture of social significance.. *Warwick." the corporal said.
knows
Augustus John so well should fy the bloody things. The ants get ja Jack.") With relentless vitality that she calls him Augustus The
always she are
fings together the high- eating them away?
born and the merely talented. It's always the ants," I said. In the cosmopolitan social set And then I knew-and I have she combines the driving force McAlister, the lithe King, the been certain ever since that
of a bulldozer with the pulling power of Rasputin.
ants
should have reported, would you? You must be patient he was going to marry me last went while, the hait, quivering trend of lonely nurses,
"You" man!" he said. have reported."
"You should
man.".
зго
-
"I'm in your hands," I said. time I came down,"
1
Disillusioned
I was less surprised by this than the vehemence with which she said
"But:
isn't Ex already married?" I said, "Or am I Wrong?"
It was not, I felt, a very good beginning. In the heat of India, "Maybe you'll find him with in the low suffocating over of
There Street," Bengal, good beginnings
came into Calcutta, a your crowd in Clive
later, the nurse Kerensky said. He was quite the important. From bad beginnings day or two
She was stem all the gnawing irritations, named Margaret. nicest of th: Americans; some- times he even spoke two words the little frenzies, the shrill nice girl, small, plain and un-
"I know that now," she said where one would do. That's metful exhaustions that finally distinguished, with an unattrac-
crack you, send you round the tive pallor and dark-rimmed "but he just forget to tell me where" he works."
bend and make you feel there eyes not improved by a year of at the time." are ants in your brain.
Burma su
"She seemed tired
It was almost a week later and disillusioned about some- Presently, as the days went thing, and I did not think she "that I ran into her one evening At eight-thirty I got a lift in by growing hotter and hotter, seemed hungry for anything, as she came out of the hot and
I saw
more and more of except perhaps cream cakes and suffocating little offices in Clive a truck, went down to Clive Street and waited for McAlister. McAlister. It was very necessary, a well-cooked plate of eggs and Street.
"I hadn't seen you lately," I The offices where McAlister in fact, to see more and more bacon.
Nurses on icave were quar- said. "I thought you must worked were shaded, small and of McAlister because, in a sense,
sweating you could not live without him. tered in another part of the jute have gone back" hot. Men worked
mill and one morning after u under fans. About the corridors McAlister was King McAlister week or more, I gave her a lift Indian
service boys in khaki was Lord of Administration: in in a Jeep that, with some bluff shorts, and a few others in trays, out-trays, leave-forms, and a little patience, I had crumpled dhotis, were waiting allowances, drivers, trucks, jeeps, extracted from McAlister. in a state of inscrutable bamuse- chitschits
for petrol and
ment for something to happen rations, chits for pay and trans-
or someone to arrive.
They, too, it turned out, were waiting for McAlister.
At eleven-thirty every Indian boy leapt stiffly to attention and
""This
is
port, chits for everything.
Gradually it became clear to
me that McAlister, the posSSISSOT of us all, possessed the keys to other things.
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DON
IDDON'S
DIARY
's
"Back!" she said. “I wish I were back. I longed to get down and now I long to get back. I'd go back tonight, but there's
under the fan...
"Nurses on leave have no priority," he said.
"Priority my foot,"
"Aye, priority," he said. "Both airplanes are full. They've been full for days. I've even two Group Captains waiting."
"Let them wait," I said. "Put her on the Dak."
In the hot shadiness, under the whirring fan, we stood there glaring. His eyes were bloedshot with hatred. I hated him too and his nerves were raw. There was nothing mucts to say and I said it as simply, briefly and succinctly as I could.
That afternoon she few up to Chittagong. Two". mornings later McAlister sent a chit for me to go to his office. With intense blank-eyed formality he said:
"Can you be ready this after- won? There's a Dak going to Akyab at 14.00 hours."
IN THE NEWS:
Ann
HEN I got back reel cameras present
the
possessor of us all had hoped I would not come back again.
I do not think I was wrong The only thing I was wrong about was the ants.
They course.
WORLD
are really termites of
COPYRIGHT RESERVED
OID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
"NO
• fut your tick in the space obeve and keep this panel by you until tomorrow ... when the answer will be ghas--with- another story in this suelax by
J. P. W. MALLALIEŲ
● Did yesterday's story==The Man Who Loved Efi, by Prier Vatnovi actually happen ? The answer: YES
What does Miss Maxwell like best? Gruffly, repeatedly, she tells us "Fun that is the important thing. Have fun."
But there have been times ("I prefer intellectual outlets for my energy") when her life. has ganged out a deeper, graver
note.
CO,
Busy bouncing
Pacis and Cannes, London, and busily bouncing between
Rome, Miss Maxwell goes about Her bumane tasks of restoring the self-confidence of the Almanach's distressed families. She is the Florence Nightingale of Europe's Upper Set. Bat where does the cash come from? "I'm allergic to money," she confesses.
Her autobiography gives more guidance. It seems that hotels and restaurants everywhere are the so anxious to capitalise on As when she expressed publicity which her patronage fervent hope for the future of brings them that she may have the British Empire, (*Boy,
want to see it saved?")
he
I few living expenses to meet at
all.
As in that still, pregnant If it is true that she gets her moment after last year's per- fun all found nobody in the formance of "The Frog" when Maxwell set is ever likely to royalty came backstage to talk complain,
to its glittering amateur cast. ("I was net presented.")..
And as, of course, all through her sombre quarrel with the Duchess of Windsor, which has caused.gossip for two years.
else
For there is something they can all be grateful to her
She treats them without the slightest trace of condescension.
THE POLIO VACCINE
ROW AND RISE IN TEENAGE CRIME
The announcement itself in confused, and contradictory in the paintwork and tyres of cars I have lived in ten different race cabaret. She comes from
Arbor, Michigan, was come of its statements..
and ripping the canvas tops of apartment houses during my Manchester and ber name is like a Hollywood or Broadway
convertibles.
time here, and have moved Jean Cropper, but she bas premiere a dort of super-social Representative Emanuel Cel
the
girls
are sometimes twice as buildings became co- adopted the name. "Jean Chire occasion, Klieg-lit and with an ler alleges that Surgeon-General the boys," he said operative. Now I think I shall for the stage. She is a brilliant
Leonard Scheele's reappraisal "There were schoolgirl ́ molls say put,
mimic and could be a younger New York, Tuesday, array of television and news- vaccine production "stirred cheering the murderer of Billy My trip back from Las Vegas Gracie Fields.
eight hours' flying uncer Blankenship and demonstrating took
exins At the time several scientists up a witch's brew of
$135 Miss Cropper to New York my criticised the gaudy publicity fainty and confusion." Senator outside
time only the funeral parlour. time, and
1 stopped off
a week for her brief appear- should be Chiczzo, These
one of my favourite ances" in the chorus line doctor telephoned set-up and high-pressure busi- Warren Magnuson says: "I want
These young punks
cities, for a couple of hours, and said: "While ness tactics.
has been out West only a few Last Sunday Mayor
Wagner The Americans are wooter years. the pledged an all-out fight on fully efficient in Turning their Noel Coward is due i Las He plans to domestic airlines. The service is Vegas soon, and I can hardly teenage grime.
W
a full report on all steps taken put in to straighten out the irrespon- you have been away there Since the announcement have been all sorts of there has been one mix-up after sible muddle, in handling
Salk vaccine." another. The most ferocious
spend
developments and confusion tic of some of the companies And Basil O'Connor, president the $3,500,000 over the next superb, and the latest planes. wait to hear how Noel reacts to
not
Housing stunt in the Surgeon-
ind
are
the
years. If Wagner doesn't particularly the DC-7 in which the place. regarding the Saik polio vac- manufacturing the Salk vaccine of the National Foundation for succeed more parents like the 1 few from New York to Here in New York there are cine. Do you still want is the columnist Walter Win Infantile Paralysis and a great Blankenships are going to con- Chicago in two hours (we had fewer big names on Broadway Diana to be
friend inoculated?" chell.
of the late Franklin sider leaving New York City for a tall wind of 50 mph.). Winchell is sometimes sensa- Roosevelt, who
than on Las Vegas's famous magnificent aircraft. good. was himsel Diana, my younger
but he is more often polio victim, comments; "I can
An airline ticnal
told me that Strip. The little gambling town daughter, is aged eight.
which has bloomed in the desert the Eritish Viscounts are even the waste land is close to than wrong. I listened and nothing right I told the doctor that I to him the other night and General's Voluminous
TEW YORK today is no place better. The report NEW
Americans have 2
entertainment would have to check further after he had described the mar-that gives any sound scientific to bring up children. More been exceedingly generous with becoming
for error in the Salk reason for suspending the before the child's mother gin
more people are
moving the publicity they have lavished capital of the New World. out to the suburba to Long upon the Viscount in fact, they Biggest hit and I could make a decision. vaccine, I decided that this was inoculations."
the time to have my ch
Island, to Westchester and Con- rhapsodised about it. child
necticut, and agroes the Hudson There" kne Beveral letters THE biggest hit in Manhattan is Millions of parents are doing inoculated arrowing worry for ing a new check.
from readers River to New Jersey.
my 2 new musical called "Danir of dispatches from
the par Yankees Which Because of the demands
Kuye about
Las
famous baseball team, The Wall. All over the country there to tens of thousands of parents Wazzer hopes to start inocula- my job I have to Eve in Man- ticularie tions' Boon. a dreadful fear that something been injected with the vaccine-
hattan, right in the heart of I hope did not overdo my Street Journal'a dramma y critic has gone seriously wrong with
The mayor's desk is piled New York City. The day I criticisms of the gambling town. comments solemnly: The new Commercialism high with problems. There has the production of the vaccine
my During the last few days there musical hit is not for English- informed me that an outbreak of hirvende land from Nevada
the I
of the local resi- men, but it'a for alonet every- met some which was to rout and perhaps THE Salk story has also been been
which I dents - good, hard-working one else.” conquer infantile paralysis. tainted by cynical commer delinquency, the brutal, sense- apartment building In
less muodes
is
Americans with small earnings Englishman Edmund Purdon. a 15-year-old live
going
"co-operative.”
aters in pictures, His, studio,
the same thing-checking and There is worrying.
whose children have already
But suspended they are, pend;
**New York City Mayor Robert
This
Dr Jonas Salk, the scientist cialism. Some doctors bave how. Billy Blancato and a 10eans that teremt have to who shun the casinos, the bars is leaping ahead of most male who developed the serum, has been charging's $10 for a wave of hooliganism, by mass buy their apartments or fat tee and the cones in Las MGM, says he is the greatess
remained calm, confident, and, shot of the serum and there of boys and girls.
of doctors
'n little conteroptuous have been incidents cities à was starprised when I vark- money, as well as pay monthly. Vegan, and their pastors say and in Teari
-of-the prey! I wonder why Bly,
putting down 4. lump sum of There are 45 I think, of the politics-playing that is in New York
But
retain their ed my car in 89th Street maintenance charges, which are they are battling sin. going on. Possibly he has made inoculating adults for high fees, between Park and Lexington in most instances about
Graham, popularity.
Stewart
wbo who has done so much good for has been in movies 20 years, hid have been better if he had re- must come arst.
There has said:
leave your
doesn't carzy tour plotures playing --- in New- mained in his laboratory as he been a stock market boom in automobile there baidy it's operative building
sels his
crusade to his originally planned in the shares of certain of the liable to get mariced up his apartment (or tries to). If There is very big job to be who da 51, 7 also has four w
The way that the Salk vac manufacturers.
older The policeman told me that property is booming he maices a donerely a bigger one than pictures about to be released SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, LTD, cine has been handled from the The Salk story could be ex-ganes of youts had been going prot on his initial investment, in Scotland or in, Bogland,
Gable, 54, Milland, 47, Gol- KOWLOON beginning has not been implosive politically and the Ad- around the neighbourhood with and if property is in a alany hey On my last day in Las Vegas men, 64 are three others who
ministration has been evasive, rives and
mutilating takes a loss..
I met a showgirl in the kibe-; fave endured.
400 mugana-it-might--ring-the-law that children -AveIDE reste quereta čenant-leaves a÷CO-" 30"Any people, Nevada. York Just now, James Cagney
HONGKONG.
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