The Pacific, as you like it:

lugubrious or hilarious

The difference between Time Expired, a novel of New Guinea cargo-cult by G. C. O’Donnell, and Serpents in Para dise, a piece of inspired nonsense by Nancy Phelan, is the dif ference between a beef-steak pudding and a souffle. But if such dishes can have messages I’m not too sure that the Phelan variety is not more valid than that of O’Donnell.

LET’S take the beef-steak first.

This somewhat lugubrious tale of Papua-New Guinea follows a now established pattern that the territory is dark with foreboding, fraught with primeval passions rooted back in the Stone Age. The Papuan characters, weighted down with this heritage, play out their allotted roles while the Europeans become props against whom they act or react. ... . .

All this, of course, is authentic enough Papua-New Guinea if you are content to view it through a narrow opening. As author O Donnell has it, the territory certainly is no fun-place.

The period of the story is immediately post-war; the theme is a resurgence of a cult and of a legendary cult hero, the Old Man of Lamon, who had been killed during the war and of a new leader who aspires to take his place.

It is also the story of George Beechcroft, a patrol officer whose knowledge of his native subjects is deep enough to frequently make him appear to do the wrong thing but not deep enough to quell the rumb lings of his own conscience,

Copybook blotted

. Willy-nilly Beechcroft becomes the focal point of the story. He must d ea i with the beefy, bellowing planter Ramsay whose trivial actions bring the story to its c imax; it is Beech . croft who knows what happened to t jj e old Man Q f Lamon during the war an( j w jj o was involved; and it is finally Beechcroft, who, in the Administration’s eyes, blots his copy book and, in the time-honoured fashion of the territory, is transferred to another station (taking with him his native mistress, Mulu).

And it still seems to be a flavour

Cross between Rarotonga, GE/C

of Beechcroft which lingers on into the days of his successor who, also in the tradition of New Guinea, sets about putting everything into reverse, of clapping people into gaol, of rooting out Beechcroft favourites and picking one of his own—Pana, who, unknown to him, happens to be the murderer of the Old Man of Lamon. • G “ s 0 ’5 OI ? ne11 w as a patrol officer in New Guinea from 1937 to the outbreak of the Pacific War and again between 1947 and 1952. He now lives in Sydney. His novel won second prize in the Adelaide Festival of Arts literary competition in 1964.

Islands extravaganza

A XTr , t m ND now to the Phelan souffle, Serpents in Paradise, an extravaganza in which the indigenous inhabitants of the mythical Peaceful Islands Colony are dedicated to the gentle art of pleasing themselves, and the Europeans are given the comedy r °l es - Although the Peaceful Islands seem to be a cross between Rarotonga and

the Gilbert and Ellice Islands no one who pretends to being even a distant relation to an Islands old-hand will fail to recognise the types' There’s His Honour, who is hang ing on to his job as long as the Colonial Office will allow, because there won’t be any more; the hearty medical officer whose jokes are on the anatomical side; the Girl Guides who promise to do their duty to God and the Queen and obey the Guide Law, then wear their uniforms to make love on the beach. There are the British who patronise the New Zealanders; and the New Zealanders who, having been to Samoa, say Sfl-maw, and despise the Australians (not only because of the accent); the two Baha’i ladies who have given up a year of their lives for whatever Baha’i ladies do on Pacific islands and who become a thorn in the side of the established LMS lady who devotes her time to arranging Items, as a bait for her husband’s lectures on the sinfulness of Sunday sport. (Blushingly she remembers “the night her housegirl’s

Tahitian cousin did an Item, un

censored. , . . Crying tamure-tamur

the beautiful creature had wriggle< her hips in a frenzied hula, whippin; off the pareu strip round her ches and rotating each breast, separately together, inwards then out wards. . . .”) Then there was Leicester; sweet naive, sincere, earnest Leicester- New Zealand of course—who go hooked on the Pacific when, afte years in the Education Office o the Islands Territories Departmeni Wellington, he was chosen as ai assistant to a NZ delegate to a Pacifi seminar.

Romantic, democratic

There he had been fascinated t< find that all the Islands delegate were chiefs and princesses, in white with gardenias behind their ear and romantically, graciously demo cratic. When the Peaceful Island Colony advertised a position tha would suit Leicester’s talents (becaus< the Colonial Office would tak anyone these days, even he applied and got it.

As the story opens we find ou

m-hero, Leicester, Colonial Service four months standing, seconded to icific Islands Development League IDL for short), with his enthusiasm ly slightly dented about the edges.

He lives in a small wooden house th a kerosene refrigerator that goes it, and harbours ants; a shower om that harbours cockroaches; a ►usegirl who makes passes and who ,s a fat baby named Daniel and » visible husband. He is deeply love with one of the princesses 10m he met at the seminar but who iw turns out to be the girl who imps registered parcels in the post Pice. And who has a mother and whole host of female relatives who e fat, toothless, dress in shapeless rments with gaping plackets, gging hemlines.

Ben, the princess’ father, wears a reu wrapped round beneath ndant bosoms or, for more formal casions, an athletic singlet, ragged orts and an old felt hat.

While Ben and Leicester eat at table, with the best china, Leicester uirms uncomfortably because the Dmen of the family squat out back (awing cold taro and tinned corned ef.

Leicester’s boss is Mr. Holmes tio has sworn to educate the people me what may, and to this end he is Leicester turning out posters that

Y The Bathhouse Is Not

TE LATRINE, and things called mnelgraphs and film strips on bed

spreads, pit latrines and how to carve tikis.

Also to this end, as the story begins, come three Experts, specially imported Constantopoulous, Egyptian-Greek, who is to set up co-operatives; Miss Arbuthnott, English, spinster, moustached, who is Infant Health and whose hobby is breast-feeding for the masses; and Offenbach, a Dutch fisheries officer, who spends most of his time at the bottom of the lagoon studying the sexual habits of trochus.

Nancy Phelan, who has written two entertaining travel books, another, more serious novel, several books on yoga and who once had something to do with visual aids for

the South Pacific Commission, probably had a lot of fun writing about her Peaceful Islanders and the madly serious Westerners who take their world with them like snails carrying their shells on their backs.

The author’s long association with the Pacific and her piquant sense of humour that made her travel books on the Gilbert Islands and on Turkey so enjoyable, give her all the qualifications for a novel like this.

It is a romp, a laugh from start to finish and—with affection —cuts the

Pacific right down to size.-

JT.

(TIME EXPIRED. Published by Leksand Press, 22 Nelson Street, Woollahra,

Sydney. $3.85. Serpents In Paradise.

Macmillan; $3.85.)