Oh, Those Winton-Browne Women

The Scorpions, a first novel by Marie-Louise Baird, owes something to William Faulkner. Miss Baird, having dis covered Faulkner’s Compson family formula of lust, incest and suicide introduces us to several generations of a sex-obsessed upper class English family who indulge in adulteries and mis carriages in the left wing of Charters, a Georgian Mansion in the Home Counties. It is like transforming Yoknapatawpha County into Kent —almost.

IHE only trouble is that Marie- L Louise Baird can’t write like r illiam Faulkner. She certainly irinkles her work with sex, but the ;sult is not a Faulkner novel but imething that might have been ex acted from one of the more brilliant . Trinian’s sixth formers.

There is, for instance, grandma dith, an old Harrods bitch, who lays Chopin and Brahms, and rumi ites on the fact that her daughter idith hasn’t slept with husband Brian nee she gave birth to a son, Alan, years ago. Judith has a “thing” bout pregnancy.

Grandfather Winton-Browne is )und-the-bend in a nursing home, id his two other daughters, Beatrice id Elizabeth, have made unhappy larriages due to a certain kink in le family strain.

Claire, a rather wet, wan 18-year- Id debutante, is engaged to Martin, nd asks him to “postpone the wed ing, as it is terribly exciting being igaged”.

When Martin starts counting the ays to the nuptial night she wants 3 know why he is in a “funny mood”, ieanwhile, out in the garden Kitty is lanting her bulbs and scheming to educe Martin.

Kitty, deserted by her mother in hildhood, thinks it rather a shame t her age that she hasn’t had an in eresting experience and is technically i virgin.

Her 16-year-old schoolgirl cousin Catrin, contemplating her 36 inch >ust in her gym slip, isn’t content to vait. She gets herself picked up in a forking espresso bar by Bob, a cad vho drives a red sports. She is the mly Winton-Browne woman who re gards sex as a pleasure and not a lisease.

H you think this is all a bit much, '°u should read the rest of it.

You’ll read how Kitty carries the °rch for Martin even higher by (a) ‘unbathing in her bikini under his window, and, (b) trapping him on a 10t summer day in the wood shed. (“Don’t fight it, darling,” she says.

Its the weather, I think.” My God,

thought Martin, realising that she wore nothing under her blouse, Vm mad, it’s the heat, the sun, mad dogs and Englishmen.)

As you might gather, Martin is an old boy of an English grammar school.

Anyhow, Kitty flees inside the house where she sends word to Martin to come up and fix the lights. When Martin arrives, he finds Kitty stark naked and nothing wrong with the lighting. He calls her an exhibitionist.

Kitty grips his thigh.

Martin, remembering the playing fields of Eton, removes her hand.

“You’re poaching on private grounds, Kit,” he says, which shows how a good English education helps to keep a stiff upper lip.

There is lots more like this, in case you care.

According to the jacket, Marie-

Louise Baird was educated inj English convent in Bruges.—AF. (THE SCORPIONS. Published Macmillan. 20/-.)

In Occupied

England

The days when Grosvenor Sq was occupied by bourbon drink buttock slapping, US Army Gena who sat out the early part of W War 11 with their secretaries, fc the background to this spran novel, “Before You Go”, by 1 York born Jerome Weidman.

THE story can be summed uj how did Julie, the daughter • penniless Neapolitan immig barber from East Ninth Street, ai in the drawing room of a Victo mansion somewhere in the Enj countryside to share an astonis moment with an exiled monarch The conflict between Benja (“Poison”) Ivey and the Sarno fa: begins in Julie’s adolescence in New York slums and is taken u{ years later in wartime London, v Ivey has become the US Presidi right-hand man—a sort of junior J Foster Dulles.

Unfortunately, Weidman is on' those prolific American writers pad their novels with such nee< detail that the characters are los the reader’s sight in a swamp of fl back and verbiage.

Consider Weidman’s heroine, ' Sarno, a girl who never utters a si word where a paragraph will do “When it happened, both th before you had to face Crispin then Brahmin, when you collap both times, you didn’t know al Celia and Frank Prohst. Both t. times you thought you’d got what wanted. Both those times, you t not standing alone. Both those ti\ Ben —and no amount of lying is g; to change the facts, because I there, Ben, both times you believed it was you that Celia lo only you, not anybody else.”

There is page after page of type of. writing, almost a “m these days for the contemporary nc as practised by John P. Marqu James Gould Couzzens, John O’H and even old Grace Metalious.

But these other best selling An can novelists, discovered that liberally lacing their works with sn town sex they could reach the seller lists despite the i lb we and 500 pages size of their books Weidman, however, has ploddeo regardless, and readers of the O’B school will be disappointed by

ick of lust. We think so, anyhow, he Australian censor may have got > the novel before we did, because ie pages numbered 121-152 were lissing from our copy and that is ist about where Mr. Ivey is accused f putting his hand up the skirts of 1-year-old girls in his Nature Club. -AF. (BEFORE YOU GO. Published by einemann. 22/6.)

Australia’s First

Policewoman

It will no doubt come as a surprise ) many people to learn that when he New South Wales Police Force in 915 appointed Lillian Armfield to he force as a policewoman, she was robably the first policewoman ap ointed to any police force in the >orld.

SER appointment was watched with interest by the police in Lmerica and Britain—especially fhen her work turned out to be so uccessful that more and more women rare appointed. But this was not efore the then Police Commissioner, nd Lillian Armfield herself, had to withstand a barrage of criticism rom the Sydney public, who had had econd thoughts, and decided that he whole thing was really a bit infair on the criminals.

Policewoman Armfield worked in lain clothes.

Police Sergeant Armfield retired a ew years ago after 34 years of ervice, during which she exposed iydney charlatans, blackmailers, irocurers, drug peddlers and coiners tnd put thousands of girls on the ight path. She helped break up the vhite slave traffic, made many arrests )f violent women criminals, and m one occasion was subject to mob dolence herself.

Her story is now told by Sydney ournalist Vince Kelly in Rugged ingel. Kelly, who once lived in New Guinea, has a whole succession of :rime books to his credit.

Kelly and ex-Sergeant Armfield between them have got down on paper all the more interesting cases in which she took part in 34 years, and they have also taken the opportunity here and there to point out some of [he evils which still have to be fought m Sydney—including the problem of lesbianism. . Lesbianism in Sydney is on the increase, says Kelly, and must be tackled openly. Ex-Sergeant Armfield thinks an investigation is overdue.

A chapter on “The Yanks and Our Teenagers” deals with Sergeant Arm

field’s experiences in Sydney during the American wartime invasion.

Often it was the girl brought up in a comfortable home and who had attended an expensive private school who was the first to get out on the loose.

She and the Australian police con ducted raids “with strict regard to the sensitivity of those controlling the US forces in Australia”.

No member of the Vice Squad nor any of the policewomen, would address a single word to the American servicemen whose beds they found being shared by young Australian

girls. While the girls were required to dress themselves in readiness to leave, the men of the US Provost would take particulars of the identity of the servicemen. That would close the episode for them. The Americans were not to know how old the girls were, and as a matter of course, most of the girls said they were older than they were.

Sergeant Armfield recalls one particular case of the poor little rich girl who was found in the bed of an American colonel in a Rose Bay flat, Her father was phoned and asked to come and collect her. The father

1S a successful city businessman, io, when he arrived, abused the lice for their audacity in question y the right of his daughter, who ts aged 14, to sleep with the [onel.

“The colonel,” said the business in, “is my very good friend, and had my permission to take my lighter out this evening!”

Rugged Angel by no means con ns any brilliant writing, and one Is there are opportunities missed, t it is an interesting account of i activities of Australia’s first licewoman.

RUGGED ANGEL. Published by Angus [ Robertson. 25/-.)