Mixing The New Year Cocktail

By Alma Gross

MAUD SHERMAN sipped the cocktail.

Then added more Italian and white of egg. Why all this fuss, she thought.

Jimmy Frost, of Louvena, wouldn’t have his eyes open yet, after his Christ mas celebrations. And if Jean and Bob Freeman managed to make a safe voy age across the strait, in that unsea worthy “float” of theirs —which one day really would founder—they would be so fortified by beer that it would not mat ter whether the cocktail was made of barley-water or pea-soup.

New Year celebrations always were like a gathering of the halt and blind. So many Christmases in the tropics!

Wouldn’t it be grand to have the next one South! With plays, pictures and parties, where new faces appeared, and new wit blossomed.

Hadn’t she listened to the same old joke of Jimmy Frost’s for eight Christ mases? The one about the missionary and the Christmas gin. Yes, she was ready for a regular devout Christmas, with thoughts of angels and shepherds, the Babe and the manger, and the mes sage of “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to wards Men.”

Maud admitted that she was not look ing forward to this New Year party. Al ready she had argued with her husband about the space in the “icy-ball”—as to what was to be allotted to drink, and what to meat. If, instead of Jimmy Frost from Louvena, those bright young Mur rays from Lindfield were coming? She had met the Murrays last leave, and they had been such fun. If Jean and Bob Freeman’s place could be taken by the Archers from New Guinea? She would give anything, almost her soul, for one new face.

MAUD pulled herself together in time to prevent a double dose of gin poisoning her efforts. Her con

science stood beside her like a severe school-mistress.

What about that time when her hus band was prone with fever, and she was terrified that it might be biackwater, or cerebral? They had a bad labour-line then. A dozen ooys who lormed a treacherous core among the others. They knew her husband was delirious, that she was alone among them. They became arrogant, and refused to worx, fighting among themselves, the bullies terrorising the faithful ones into revolt against pet ticoat government.

There was that awful evening when about 20 of them had crowded onto the verandah, demanding more tobacco, more meat. Maud had managed to get a run ner with a message to Jimmy Frost.

She remembered how this little man, five feet four, thin, and frail, had walked among the mob of well-fed, sulky boys.

The little “Revenge” and her fight against the Spaniards, had nothing on Jimmy Frost. He looked them over, and before his cold blue stare, the arrogant dark eyed rebels dropped their gaze. He called them the names they most hated, and they slunk off to work—sulkily, but to work. No, that day, the Murrays from Lindfield could not have held a candle to Jimmy Frost.

And Jean and Bob Freeman. Could anyone laugh off the dangers of drown ing as those two did? Wnenever it was rough weather, or a squall was blowing the strait into a writhing monster, then Maud always bet her husband that the Freemans were on their way to pay a call, and Maud would tell the cookie to prepare for their visit. Sometimes they came because they were short of rations, or just for a talk. And no matter how fierce the weather, Bob Freeman never came alone.

“Drowning’s a good death, and I don’t want to be a widow.” Jean’s joke had as many whiskers as that of Jimmy Frost about the Christmas gin.

IF, thought Maud, I had a stock joke, too, perhaps this mood would not now be spoiling my New Year. And she began to amuse herself by wondering what her stock joke should be.

What was characteristic of herself?

Ray Winter! She pushed the name from her mind but it kept recurring. Ray Winter! Why, when she was seeking humour, must she keep thinking of tragedy. It was two years since that; surely she had laid the ghost.

Last Christmas they had missed him.

Missed his arty talk —which being quite above the orbit of their general know ledge, had given them grist for little smiles among themselves. Ray always took their digs with good humour, and the statement that they were of the earth, earthy!

Ray had been the struggling owner of a neighbouring plantation. Perhaps the spot was unhealthy, or Ray not so husky as the rest of them, but he always seemed the one to be down with fever. Then, early one morning, his boys had brought him to the Shermans. He was rolled in a blanket on the back of his truck, and Maud thought he was already dead. They did what they could for him, sending a message to the Freemans to bring their schooner and take him to Tulagi. While they waited for the Freemans the min utes were as long as years, and soon Maud knew that it would be too late for Ray.

Through that watch, when Ray, too, knew that the Freemans would arrive too late, he had wanted some spiritual help,

but in her agitation Maud could not find her prayer book; she could only murmur a few hymns.

What a crude coffin it was. And her husband had made a poor clergyman.

Misty-eyed with weariness and grief, he had fumbled through the prayer book— found later in the place in which it was always kept—and started on the wrong service. He had gone quite a way before Maud’s numbed mind had realised the mistake.

Why was she thinking of this? Should this be the joke to tell at all her social gatherings? She knew that many men had been buried in deal coffins, some times branded “packed for a tropical climate”! She knew that men laughed over these funerals —laughed before they returned to the fever-infested swamps!

Laughd because they thought they might be next.

Yes, she could make quite a good joke.

The coffin, which wasn’t without its cracks! And perhaps her husband had started on the service of public baptism!

Yes, she could work it into quite a good joke. If only it hadn’t been Ray. If it hadn’t been a friend.

MAUD gave the cocktail a final shake.

She knew all the New Year toasts and resolutions.

“Here’s to the next bottle.”

“I think nr give it up.”

“When?”

“Not here, please. Out on the lawn if you feel that way.”

They were as old as the Christmas jokes; but Maud did not mind any more.

Her mouth had returned to its accus tomed good-humoured lines. She smoothed her brown hair, which once a fortnight her husband trimmed in a

short, straight bob. Her brown eyes were soft, and believing. She was nearly forty, but she didn’t care, so neither did her friends. She poured herself a drink, and held the glass to the light.

The sun had set behind the high west ern hills, and the soft hues of sunset were spreading across the bay. The water was still and tranquil. The leap of a small fish seemed a commotion. The soft pad of the cookie boy’s feet was in tune with the low conversation of the waves on the beach. The Old Year was dying quietly, perhaps a little sullen that it could not stay longer. A bank of purple clouds was gathering on the eastern hori zon. Surely not an omen for the New Year!

Maud pledged her toast now. Later, at the traditional midnight, there would be high-pitched laughter, and gaiety, whe ther forced or real. But this, for Maud, was the witching hour of the day. The hour when she knew she had a soul.

The light plaved like little stars in the amber liquid of her drink.

“To this New Year of 1939—and to friendship! Come dancing or come death Peace or war. To friendship.” She pledged and drank her toast. “And it isn’t a bad cocktail, either,” she thought and smiled in her own peculiar twinkling way.

She pondered upon the after-effects of the drink, “Nice. Not too tame, and not too fierce. Moderate—in fact, quite a happy combination for a New Year cocktail”— and she laughed happily— for she had no way of sipping, or judging the potency of the cocktail that men were mixing in Berlin!

The Fiji School Journal has paid a warm tribute to Mr. A. H. Phillips, who has retired from the Directorship of Education, after rendering the Colony very distinguished service. The Journal praises the courage with which Mr.

Phillips attacked the problems inevitable in a young country, which is trying to create in 50 years standard and traditions, which, in other countries, have required centuries. Mr. Phillips recently left Suva for New Zealand.