Reward For Valour

Short Story:

By Lorna Crouch

HE held the two yellow steamer tickets in his moist fingers and gloated over them. Then he dropped them on to the top of his desk, and gazed with complete absorption at the printing that meant paradise for him. To the East for his three months’ leave, with Frances.

Frances! A vivid ’picture of her was forever before him: A serious, small face, behind those large tortoiseshell rims and with that ungainly straw hat she wore in the villages.

Those dirty native villages! He hated them, for they had kept Frances from him for many months.

Frances was an anthropologist, although it seemed ridiculous with such a small, feminine, sprightly young woman. And she was engaged to ercy Wats more. He grinned proudly, and lovingly and reverently folded the tickets and put them back in his pocket-book.

To-day, with the tropic sun shining on the mango tree outside his office, he would tell her of his surprise. The sur prise he’d kept for many long weeks: his planning of an ideal honeymoon.

Ever since that day when he had told her that he couldn’t stand it any longer, he had kept his secret.

“Listen, darling” he had said, “ I can't stand much more of this —seeing you for about two minutes at a time. I want to have you all to myself. Now, my job finishes early in the afternoon, while you keep on working at those beastly reports!”

“They’re not beastly!” Frances stood on the tips of her toes, the better to look sternly into his fiery eyes.

“They are most interesting and neces sary. How can the Government expect to help these people if we don’t study them?”

“Let them help themselves!” Percy W T atsmore stormed vehemently and ir reverently, and attempted to kiss her.

She struggled free, sat down under the mango tree, stretched out her slim legs and relaxed with a sigh.

“How 1 can love such an inhuman creature I’m sure I don’t know.”

He stared gloomily down at her.

“You work too hard,” he said stubbornly.

“You’re doing the complaining.”

“And so I should seeing my girl fade away before my very eyes. Slaving from morn till night! I say —l’ve an idea!”

She smiled indulgently and threw the dilapidated straw hat on the ground.

“Let’s have it then, Percy Watsmore.”

He crumpled up into an untidy heap of creased white duck at her feet, “I’ve decided I’ll help you. I’ll help you all I can, Frances.”

He traced a tiny vein across her brown ankle with a piece of grass. “I’ll taring the office typewriter over every night, and I’ll type your reports. The boss won’t mind. I’ll even come on the week ends with you and the native carriers.

I’ll go into the villages with you and help you discover those things you have to discover.”

She chuckled, and appeared to be con sidering the proposition carefully, screw ing up the already upturned nose that had captivated him long ago.

“You know, Percy, I think if you’re

willing to work hard, you could be a great help to me.”

He swallowed. She studied the clouds above the horizon about a thousand miles away.

“You could write down the dialectic sounds as the natives speak to me. Tnat would save a lot of time. Yes! You shall! The hike at the week-ends will do you a world of good, after sitting in the office all the week.”

She clapped her small, brown hands.

"You could then type my reports in tne evenings. Why, I might easily finish this series weeks before time!”

Then the inspiration had come. “Why not months before time?”

“It’s possible, if we work really hard.”

He felt the strength of leviatham with in him—and so it oecame an agreement.

HE now knew the pronoun endings of this coastal tribe. He knew how they ate, how they thought, and how they lived. In short, he knew everything that Frances, with her amazing inquir ing mind, had discovered. On this hot tropical day with a mighty effort, he put the thoughts of a coastal Papuan tribe as far in the back of his mind as pos sible, and, putting his bleached head out the ever open door, he watched the long road for the first sign of the only girl in the world.

There she came. Business-like as al ways. A large bundle of books and papers were under an arm and in her free hand she waved a piece of paper.

His heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Yes, that’s it, he thought, a sledge hammer. That’s because this is the most wonderful day of my life. I’ll be telling her soon now . . .

Frances was walking quickly. She be gan to run towards him, and he stepped giddily down the path and held out his arms.

“Darling, darling” she called, breathless from hurrying. The venerable straw hat had blown off, her unruly hair was fly ing about, and her eyes were large and shining, behind the horn-rims.

“What do you think has happened?” she ran down the slope and was clasped by two strong, arms. “My reports—the ones you helped me with! They’re good, they say. Look at this radio! It says they have granted me a scholarship to go right ahead at once and investigate that inland tribe we heard of. That one a hundred miles inland. Isn’t it won derful? And, Oh Percy, to think I owe it all to you.”

“You what?” he demanded. The sun was going in fast. The tropical even ing seemed to have taken on a chill.

“I’ve accepted it, of course,” she said complacently her mind evidently already with the inland tribe, “I’ve already radioed my acceptance. I’ll start to morrow. There’s nothing I’d like better!”

The steamer tickets inside his pocket book shrivelled into two shapeless bits of paper that represented nothing at all.

Certainly not a honeymoon at sea. The sun fell beneath the horizon at an alarming rate and sudden night com pletely engulfed Mr. Percy Watsmore,

Dr. Norman H. Fisher is now with the Commonwealth Bureau of Mineral Re sources, Canberra. He was government geologist in New Guinea from 1934 to 1941. He was one of the 10 men who escaped from Rabaul by launch within close range of the Japanese in January, 1942.