The Sad Handicap of the Plumber's

Mate

THE time having arrived when the toilet cistern would neither fill nor empty, in its usual noisily uninhibited fashion, Mrs. Gordon asked her hus band to call in at the Public Works De partment and get the advice of a plumber.

She awaited the outcome with interest, feeling that a Guadalcanal plumber must surely not only live up to the piquant re putation of the profession but should, as well, have something individual to contri bute to the lustre of plumbing in general.

So on a brilliant morning when the glittering air overhead was torn to shreds by the swooping of a flock of dove-white birds —contradicting their seraphic ap pearance with harsh screams of cockatoo derision —the plumber came. He came panting up the hill in a war veteran of a jeep. He was sixteen stone of Fijian, with a little Solomon Islander —either terrified or else very sulky—bringing up the rear.

The plumber came thumping cheerfully into the house and, while she faced his flow of greetings and comments on the weather, Mrs. Gordon’s uneasily roving eye caught a provocative glimpse of the plumber’s Solomon Islander mate fur tively edging away behind the house wash.

The plumber wore a white shirt and boiler suit, teamed with a pair of sand shoes reminiscent of landing barges.

Talking richly and rapidly, he stumped into the bathroom and gallantly squeezed himself into the toilet annexe. Still talk ing and pawing affectionately at the newly-painted walls with large and dingy hands, he rapidly sized up the cistern situation.

Saying philosophically., “Trouble com ing every day” (about the only bit of his conversation that Mrs. Gordon was able to take to her heart), the plumber next lived up to all stories involving plumbers by intimating that he must send for various tools-of-trade necessary to cover the job. He leant upon the gallery rail and bellowed into the middle distance for plumber’s mate, who emerged nervously from his retreat and then went hurtling obediently down the hill in search of tools.

MRS. GORDON returned to her sewing but, from the bathroom, the Fijian continued to fire off mangled re marks about the weather, the architec ture of the bungalow, how, to take the stains off the fibrolite ceiling and, if Mrs. Gordon’s quivering ears did not de ceive her, about the deficiencies of his own personal plumbing.

He then thumped out of his seclusion to ask whether he might borrow a pocket knife.

Opening and shutting drawers in her desk and going into little trances in an effort to remember just where she had seen a pocket knife lying about, Mrs.

Gordon was roused from her research by the plumber clicking open a large pocket knife right in her ear, at the same time informing her (Mrs. Gordon thought) that this was one he had found in the bathroom, that he had been using it satisfactorily for the past ten minutes, that it strongly reminded him of a pocket knife he had owned in earlier days, that he wouldn’t mind being offered a knife like this any day now. ( He also added something about its be ing so useful for something or other, at the same time gesturing with the open blade towards his ample stomach. Pre ferring to interpret this as an intimation that a knife was ever so handy to clip on to the belt, Mrs. Gordon was pleased to

notice plumber’s mate back again, plus tools, and skulking uneasily behind a paw-paw tree.

This fact being drawn to the plumber’s attention, he charged outside with shouts of “You come!” and herded plumber’s mate towards the steps. Here the plum ber stopped dead, bent down and removed the landing barges, which for the rest of the morning stood monumentally at the foot of the steps—whether for their sake or the sake of the bathroom floor Mrs. Gordon was unable to decide.

JUDGING from sounds in the bathroom, work then began in earnest. But suddenly plumber’s mate was seen to burst out wildly and make a dash for the house-wash, with barefoot plumber in angry pursuit, waving the borrowed pocket-knife and looking alarmingly in fluential.

By Rosa Moore

Plumber’s mate circled the house-wash and bounded up the steps and back again to the bathroom. His part in the subse quent curious proceedings seemed to com prise alternate dashes for cover and en forced returns (with much vituperation) to the job in hand. He was a rather black youth, with a slipping grey calico and hair worn in a lime-bleached pagoda.

He had the air of one who never did keep up those correspondence lessons on plumbing and was therefore utterly out of his depth.

The floor vibrating suddenly, Mrs.

Gordon realised that the plumber had again materialised behind her. He asked for a cold drink. Opening the door of the icebox a mere crack so as not to dis play the beer too openly, she fished him out some fresh lime-juice.

He drained this resignedly and lum bered back to the job, shouting men acingly, “You better come back, eh?” to a small area of grey calico incautiously protruding round the corner of the house wash.

There was quite a long interval, broken by sounds of cataracting water and muffled thumps, before the plumber again accosted Mrs. Gordon. He seemed to be asking to borrow one of the coir mats, at the same time saying that he felt tired and there was far too much water.

Jumping to the conclusion that the plum ber had drunk too much lime-juice, had come out in a heavy perspiration and was forced to lie down for a little while, Mrs. Go? don nodded assent,rather than attempt to delve further int - the situa tion. " V Mat and plumber’s mate (flushed out of brief sanctuary in the house-motorcar) disappeared into the bathroom. Mrs.

Gordon was left to sew and diagnose the hammerinp- and skirmishing.

FIVE minutes before knock-off time, the plumber waved her up to the scene of activities and she noted, without surorise, plumber’s mate filtering quietly down the side steps to the garden as she approached.

“Now you look here, miss,” (he plumber said, seating himself in reverse on the toilet seat and turning up a bland brown

face. “You see this one here—he won’t work until to-morrow. But all right for you to use to-night if afterwards you push this one nere and see the water not coming up more high than to here. A little bit of trouble, yes, but all well to morrow. I forget the other tool now, but to-morrow I come back and take out tnis wrong pipe here and close him. You use him all right to-night, to-morrow I come back and fix him proper.”

And he added, in a bellow, “Here, YOU —you come quicktime, catch’im tool.”

Plumber’s mate failed to materialise, being by this time well out of control.

The plumber continued to sit enthroned and explained, with a gusty sigh, “This boy has a tabu. He say it is tabu for him to work with lavatories. He is frightened too much. He say debbils get very cross about lavatories. I tell him— I do him, and it not kill me yet. More better he take some other job now, I think.”

Then he arose heavily, brushed down his boiler suit and prepared to depart.

“I come to-morrow,” he cried, thril lingly. "But for now—all right you start to use him.”

Beaming, he donned his landing barges.

Angrily, he scanned the empty landscape.

Waving companionably, away he drove.

Mrs. Gordon sympathetically stayed to watch plumber’s mate emerge cautiously from round the corner of the poultry run. He looked sadly as if he were weighing tangible angry plumber against hypothetic? 1 avenging debbils.

With rolling eyes, he went streaking off down the hill after the receding jeep.