A Trader's Tale

By Tukapa Koko

THE Big Meeting was on. The head island had, as soon as the interisland Pairmile arrived, filled up to bursting with assorted Resident Agents from the outer isles, and the plane from NZ also decanted a mob of VIPs into our midst.

I, permitted to travel from Mangaia in the exalted society mentioned, had come over to get the facts: for ’twas Election Year, and things were prophesied to happen. A cheering assembly outside the Post Office greeted the Minister, who. for this occasion only, had consented to represent his Secretary, and the Secretary’s secretary, who were too busy amassing benefits conferred upon God’s Own Country by the Labour Party to spare time for an air-trip to the Islands.

"Hoots! Aiblins! Kia-ora tae ye a’!’’ said Mr. Fraser, the famous politiciancum-ethnologist, who had, just before his departure from New Zealand, discovered that the Maori of NZ (who has a vote) is of Caucasian lineage, in spite of tropical sunburn, and had expressed his intention of some day writing a book upon the subject.

Enthusiasm thickened the Minister’s tongue once more with the homely Scots burr of his pre-ethnological days. Recovering, he addressed the assembly in precise Oxfordese.

“I have great news for the Cook Islands,” he said. There was expectant applause. Perhaps the vexed question of Permits for Everybody was to be solved at last in our teetotal dependenev. But the New Zealand Government had something better than that to offer.

“We have decided,” Mr. Fraser went on, “to applv the Family Allowance provisions of New Zealand to the Islands and to pay parents 10 - weeklv toward the maintenance of each child.”

There was a sensation among the multitude. Then a native spokesman took upon himself to respond. “Py corry. that fine! What you call him—Sexual Security, eh, for the Cook Islands?”

“Social Security,” corrected the Minister, with a slight frown. “Furthermore,

we have decided to improve the Cook Islands orange plantations. Our experts are of opinion that the soil of the Islands is not fresh enough—it’s the very same soil that was there when Captain Cook called. So we propose to put our Public Works engineers into action, and have each island cut away underneath and turned up on the other side. Virgin territory thus gained, will immediately be planted with the very latest types of trees, from which we expect gratifying results.” fpHERE was a silence. "But where are X we going to stay while you are do ing the job?” inquired some anti- IMD crepe-hanger.

The Minister, from force of habit, looked round for his Secretary. Then he remembered. "Put that question on the notice-paper,” Fraser replied with dig nity, and, perhaps, to cover the contre temps, he beckoned me to the platform, Breaking through a massed phalanx of Resident Agents, Council Members and Standard reporters, I reached it.

“Hoo lang hae ye been doon here in the islands, ma wee laddie?” inquired the Minister.

"Twenty-three years, sir,” replied I, with deference due to a leading ethno legist.

“And ye went through all the hur ricanes, the Depression and the War, oot yon at Man-gaia?” asked the great man.

“Yes, sir, I did,” said I.

"Wi’oot a’e Pension, State Aid, Alloo ance or Income Tax Rebate?”

“Yes, sir, and brought up a family on forty pounds a year,” said I, giving the simple facts of Mangaia life, “A’m prood o’ ye, ma buckie!” was the great man’s reaction to this. Then, re collecting himself, he slipped back into English. “In view of your long residence upon Mangaia, and your exemplary endurance of conditions normally asso ciated with the Government that held power in New Zealand before our Party took over, we have decided to confer upon you a Young Age Pension of four-and

tuppence monthly, and to recommend you for the Order of the Moon and Sixpence.

You may have the sixpence immediately —hae ye a ‘sprat,’ Wally?* He turned to a colleague who had not so far said anything, being too preoccupied with some kind of activity upon a sheet of paper headed Treasury Department.

“Eh . . Oh, er, no, I’m afraid not— the recent Budget, you know!”

“Well, make a note of it, anyway,” said the Minister, giving me a kindly smile, and a Pickwickian twinkle from behind his thick glasses. Out of the wealth of his half-century’s political experience, he had learned that twinkles cost nothing, and made a good impression upon the female voter. I twinkled back, through my sun-glasses; but you can’t do it so successfully with green goggles.

The crowd, to whom the colloquy had been translated by an interpreter, roared their applause with lusty hurrahs. The Boys’ Brigade Band struck-up in a spirited rendering of the Froth-Blowers’

Anthem. The Resident Commissioner, fearful that the melody might revive the undiscussed question of Permits for Everybody, hastily ordered the selection to be replaced with “Shall We Gather at the River?” A prominent resident of the Beach, to whom the revised melody recalled a fearful occasion when he had imbibed water in mistake for gin, fainted.

The distressed one was revived by a kindly native with a little French Eau de Cologne smuggled in from the phos phate isle of Makatea.

The meeting adjourned for a native reception to Mr. Fraser and his entour age, and a feast upon the customary Polynesian lines. Mr. Fraser, reverting to his ethnological pursuits, traced a connection between the methods of pre paring “poi” and Scotch porridge, citing these as another proof of the Caucasian origin of the Maori.

Mr. Wally Nash had quit the party and adjourned to the Treasury Office. A deferential messenger called me forward to attend upon Our Walter. The Wizard of Wellington had, it seemed, found six pence in the safe at the Customs Depart ment, and was now beginning to suspect the Administration of having private means. The moon, he explained, he was not at the moment in a position to give me, but would put Mr. Fraser’s recom mendation through the Imprest Supply.

I gave the Wizard a receipt for the six pence, and he gave me a receipt for my receipt, muttering the while about teach ing the Islands Department to do busi ness in a businesslike way. So I gave him another acknowledgment of his largesse, which he duly receipted in duplicate; after which we put our dockets in two borrowed mail-bags to take home and file.

It was obvious that I had made a hit with the custodian of Enzed’s finances, always an admirer of business efficiency.

He grasped me warmly by the hand. I have reason to believe that he would have gone on to embrace the Mangaian bud geteer of £4O annual income. But we were interrupted. Mr. Fraser, in a con dition of great agitation, suddenly entered the quiet Treasury. “Losh, Wally, did ye ever see the like!” gasped Mr. Fraser.

“Thon chiel of a Native Coonsellor frae Man-gaia says the folk oot yon dinna want tae tak’ the Family Allooance, an’ they winna let the island be turned tap salteerie unless we guarantee replace ment as before, in the onlikely event that it isna’ sotisfactory! Hoots, toots! whit will become o’ the new plantations, if we agree to that?”

“What about using divers?” I asked, as Mr. Nash had no suggestion to offer.

“With plantations on both sides of the island, the production will be doubled and you would then be able to develop a new strain of waterproof orange.”

Mr. Fraser regarded me with awed admiration. Then he seized the hand that Mr. Nash wasn’t holding, and pump handled enthusiastically, with some re mark, which I did not quite catch, about adding the OBE to the Order of the Moon and Sixpence, and recommending me for the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. Mr. Nash released my other hand and took an acid drop. I became conscious also of fatigue, though Peter the Great continued pumping, like a Mr.

Pumblechook of the South Seas.

At last I was compelled to withdraw my bruised arm, which the Great Ethno logist seemed bent upon hanging up for monuments. Mr. F. would not let go, and we went into a sort of whirligig, like the Russian Ballet, but faster, which ended in Mr. Fraser flying out of one Treasury window, and I out of the other, upon the good green sward of the public square.

AND then I woke up upon the mat at the side of my little Mangaia bed.

Twas all a dream; and of my new gained Imperial honours, not even the sixpence remained to show that one had, for one crowded hour of glorious life, been in the company of the Minister for Island Territories!