‘Who was?’ I asked.
‘He was,’ he said.
That was Bloody Jack all over. He was always getting mixed up like that, without making sense, when he talked about himself. So I tried another subject, ‘What about when you can’t fish any more, as people can’t when they get too old,’ I explained to him.
‘I’m old now, son,’ he said. ‘And it doesn’t worry me. And it never will. I’ve got me pension and I’ve got me fishing and I’ve got the sea. They’ll never have to bury me, either. I know these tides here too well for that.’
‘You’re a great one not to worry,’ I said, just to end the conversation. I liked Jack, and liked talking to him, yet he never meant much. I suppose his advice about my mother and father was good, but when he talked so queer at the same time I lost confidence in it. You mightn’t understand that, how I liked hearing him talk, without going much for what he actually said. I remember thinking that if he talked nonsense about himself, what he said about me and my parents was probably nonsense, too.
Yet Bloody Jack was the only one I ever talked to about my parents. I never could talk to my sister Molly, because she was loopy.
(1957)
From the Mazengarb Report (‘Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents’)
VII. Some Visual and Auditory Influences: (1) Objectionable Publications
There has been a great wave of public indignation against some paper-backed or ‘pulp’ printed matter. Crime stories, tales of ‘intimate exciting romance’, and so-called ‘comics’ have all been blamed for exciting erotic feelings in children. The suggestiveness in the cover pictures of glamour girls dressed in a thin veiling often attracts more attention than the pages inside.
Immorality would probably not result from the distribution of these publications, unless there were in the child, awaiting expression, an unhealthy degree of sexual emotionalism. Some of these publications are, possibly, more harmful to girls than to boys in that girls more readily identify themselves with the chief characters. One striking piece of information which was conveyed to the Committee was that the girls under detention in a certain institution (the greater number of them had had a good deal of sexual experience) decided that various publications were more harmful than films because the images conveyed by the printed matter were personal to them and more lasting.
The Committee has been deluged with periodicals, paper-backed books, and ‘comics’ considered by their respective senders to be so harmful to children and adolescents that their sale should not be permitted. But, while all the publications sent are objectionable in varying degrees, they cannot be rejected under the law as it at present stands because that law relates only to things which are indecent or obscene.
An Inter-departmental Committee set up in 1952 to report on worthless and indecent literature similarly found that, while publications intended for adults are controlled by the Indecent Publications Act (which in the opinion of that Committee, was adequate providing the public initiated action under it), comics and other publications outside the scope of that Act might be objectionable for children.
When considering comics it is essential to appreciate the difference between the traditional comic, intended exclusively for children, and the more modern style which is basically designed for low-mentality adults. Both styles and variations of them circulate widely in New Zealand among children and adolescents. In general, however, younger children buy, and even prefer, the genuine comic which is not harmful and may even be helpful. Adolescents, and adults also, are attracted by comic books that have been denounced by various authorities as anti-educational, and even pernicious, in moral outlook.
The Inter-departmental Committee recommended that all comics be registered and that it be made an offence to deal in unregistered comics. There are strong doubts whether the adoption of those proposals would provide a satisfactory solution. Once registration were obtained (which would be almost automatic on application) much damage might be done by the distribution of a particular issue before registration could be cancelled.
Surely a simpler, faster, and safer procedure would be to make initial registration more difficult and subsequent deregistration more speedy.
Amendments recently made to the laws of various Australian States should result in a general improvement in the standard of publications distributed in Australia, and consequently in New Zealand. On the other hand, this tightening of the law may induce distributors to dump in New Zealand publications for which they have no longer a market in Australia.
A banning, rather than a censorship, of printed matter injurious to children should be the subject of immediate legislation for three reasons:
(a) To prevent the Dominion being used as a market to offset any trade lost in some Australian States;
(b) To encourage the efforts of those people who seek to lead children through good reading to better things; and
(c) To let publishers know that the time has passed when publications likely to be injurious to the minds of children and adolescents may be distributed by them with impunity.
In order to meet the situation, it would be desirable for the Government to promote special legislation along the lines of the Victorian Police Offences (Obscene Publications) Act 1954.
The Victorian legislation is particularly effective since not only does it widen the definition of ‘indecent’ and ‘obscene’, and enables the police themselves to institute proceedings for breaches of the Act, but it also compels all distributors to be registered. Then, should a distributor be convicted of an offence, he may be deregistered, and in that case would be unable to distribute any other publication whatever.
(1954)
The Social Pattern
Dan Davin, ‘The Quiet One’
The band concert was over and three of us came out of the Regent into Dee Street with the rest of the crowd.
‘I could swear she gave me the eye,’ Sid said.
‘I’ll bet she did,’ Wally said. ‘One look’d be all she’d need, too. Who did, anyway?’
‘That sheila with the black hat on that was in front of us about two seats away. You’d be too busy looking at the statue of the naked Greek dame to notice, I expect. Anyhow she was just in front of me when we were coming out and when I pushed the swing door open for her she turned round and gave me a real grin. Look, there she goes.’
He pointed the way we were going, and, sure enough, we could see a black hat bobbing along a bit in front where the crowd wasn’t so thick.
‘Come on, boys,’ said Wally, ‘Here we go.’
‘But, look here,’ I said, ‘I thought we were going to the Greek’s.’ All the same, I changed my pace to keep up with theirs.
‘To hell with the Greek’s. Who wants to be sitting down to eggs and chips when there’s a chance of picking up a sheila, eh, Sid?’
Sid just grunted. You couldn’t see the girl because of the crowd and he was staring straight down the footpath, towards where we’d last seen her. You wouldn’t have needed to know him as well as I did to guess from the sour way his mouth was closed that he didn’t fancy the shape things were taking much. Wally was a tiger for the girls, and a good-looking joker, too. And old Sid hadn’t had the same confidence in himself since the dentist made him have all his top teeth out. Wally didn’t give him much chance to forget about it, either, calling him Gummy all the evening.
Not that there was anything in it for me, anyway. If there was only one girl I wouldn’t be the chap who got her, that was certain. And, as a matter of fact, though I’d have been the last to say so, I’d have been scared stiff if there’d been the least danger of me being the one. I never really knew why I tagged along with them those Sunday evenings. I must have hoped some sort of miracle would happen, I suppose, and that some sheila or other would fall for me and put me into a position where one move had to follow the other in such a way that my mind’d be made up for me. At the same time I was terrified that just that would h
appen, knowing in advance that at close quarters with a girl I’d be like a cow with a musket. Anyhow, I needn’t have worried. Nothing ever did happen and by this time I think I was getting to realise, only I wouldn’t admit it, that nothing ever would.
That didn’t stop me, though, from putting off going home till the last possible moment in case some sort of miracle turned up and when I finally left Wally or Sid at Rugby Park corner of a Saturday or Sunday night I’d trudge the rest of the way home in the rain or the moonlight, cursing myself and the town and everything in it and wondering what the hell was the matter with me, whether I was a different breed or what, and why it was always me that was left, and thinking that in some other country somewhere things mightn’t be like that at all and people would see what I really was instead of what I’d always been.
So, with all that at the back of my mind, and Wally rampaging alongside with about as many afterthoughts as a dog has after a rabbit, and Sid on the other side getting down in the mouth already at the thought that Wally was going to pinch his girl, I didn’t think much of the night’s prospects. The upshot’d be that Wally would get her all right and I’d have to spend what was left of the evening at the Greek’s trying to cheer Sid up by encouraging him to skite about all the girls that had fallen for him and pretending not to notice how much Wally going off with this one had got under his skin.
Well, after a bit the crowd got thinner and most of them started to cross over to where the last tram was waiting, towards the Majestic side. So we could see better what was in front of us. And there was the girl all right, about twenty yards ahead, all by herself into the bargain, and pacing along at a fair bat. Good legs she had, too.
‘I reckon she knows we’re following her,’ Wally said. ‘The trouble is, there’s too many of us.’
That’s right, Wally.’
It was very sarcastic the way Sid said it but that didn’t worry Wally.
‘Go on, Sid,’ he said, ‘don’t be a dog in the manger. A fair fight and let the best man win, eh?’
Of course, that was just the trouble, the way Sid looked at it. It’s always the best man who says these things.
Anyhow, before Sid could think of an answer, or before he could think of something that wouldn’t have given away he knew he hadn’t a hope against Wally whatever kind of fight it was, the girl started to cross the road and so, us too, we changed course like a school of sprats and over the road after her, only about ten yards behind by this time.
She stepped up on to the footpath on the opposite side of the road, us tagging behind like three balloons on a string. She looked behind just then and saw us.
‘Now’s our chance,’ Sid said, getting quite excited and nervous, I could tell.
Wally didn’t say anything but he took advantage of his long legs and he was up on the pavement a good yard in front of us.
It was darker on the footpath because of the shop verandahs and because the nearest street-lamp was a good distance away. At first I couldn’t see what was happening, owing to the notion I had that if I wore my glasses when we were out on the pick up on nights like this I’d spoil my chances, such as they were; but I felt both Wally and Sid check. And then I saw what it was. The girl had stepped into a shop doorway and there was a chap there waiting for her.
The girl and her bloke came out of the doorway and walked off towards the other end of Dee Street, her hanging on his arm and talking a blue streak and laughing the way we could tell the joke was on us. And the bloke looked back, once as if he’d like to have come at us. But, seeing Wally and thinking he had the trumps anyway, I suppose, he turned round again and kept on going.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ Wally said.
‘Foiled again,’ Sid said. But he didn’t sound narked at all, really, and I knew by his voice he’d sooner have had it that way so that the laugh was on Wally instead of on himself as it would have been if things had gone differently.
I was pleased, too, for that matter, though I couldn’t help envying that bloke a bit with a good-looking girl on his arm and a nice new blue overcoat and Borsalino and never a doubt in his head as to where he was going and what he’d do when he got there.
Still, envying him made it easier to pretend I meant it when I cursed the girl up hill and down dale like the others. For it wouldn’t have done for me to show I was really relieved. It was sort of understood that even if I didn’t mean business like Wally and Sid I had to go through the motions just the same. They really weren’t bad blokes in a way, Wally and Sid, because they knew all the time I wasn’t a serious competitor and yet they always treated me as if I was, thinking I’d be hurt if they didn’t, I suppose.
And I would have been hurt, too. Somehow, if there hadn’t been this kind of agreement about the way we were all to behave, I’d have had to drop the game altogether. I could tell that, because when, as happened sometimes, other blokes joined us who didn’t know the rules or didn’t care if there were any and they began to pull my leg, I always pushed off after a while. Which was what these other chaps wanted, I expect. ‘The Wet Napkin’, I heard one of them, Ginger Foyle it was, say once after I’d gone and he didn’t think I could hear him, because I hadn’t got my glasses on, perhaps.
No, Wally and Sid weren’t like that, especially Wally. They knew I was all right once you got to know me and, besides, I used to be able to make them laugh when we were by ourselves and get them to see the funny side of things they’d never have noticed if it hadn’t been for me.
Well, anyway, there we were left standing in the middle of Dee Street and all cursing our heads off in the same way.
‘Nothing for it but to go over to the Greek’s,’ I said.
‘Listen to him, will you, Sid,’ Wally said. ‘Him and his bloody Greek’s. And us all whetted up for a bite of something tastier than old Harry could ever put under our noses.’
I felt a fool immediately, because I might have known that was the wrong thing to say, the way they were feeling. Once Wally had got the idea of skirt into his head it wasn’t easy to put him off. And Sid, for all I don’t think he really liked Wally, would trail along with him all right, knowing that was his best chance. That was what fascinated him about Wally, he could always have what Wally didn’t want. But it was what made him hate Wally’s guts, too.
Besides, I suppose they felt I’d sort of broken the rules by not being keen enough and waiting a bit longer before giving up what we all knew was a bad job.
‘Well, what’ll we do now, Wally?’ Sid said.
‘Let’s take a stroll as far as the Civic and back,’ I chipped in, trying to establish myself again. ‘You never know, we might pick up something.’
‘That’s more like it,’ Wally said. And then, because he wasn’t a bad bloke, a better chap in many ways than Sid would ever be, added: ‘After all, if there’s nothing doing, we can always go over to have a feed at the Greek’s later on.’ Which showed he wasn’t really fooled by what I’d said.
So away we went, down past the Majestic where Len Parry and Alec Haynes and all that bunch were as usual, pretending they were talking about who was going to win the Ranfurly Shield when all they were interested in really was the girls who kept scuttling by on their way back from the band concert. I took a look at the Town Clock on the other side as we went by and there it was, half-past ten already, one more Sunday evening just about over and nothing happening, only the same old thing. Already everyone who had anywhere to go was going there and soon the only people left in the streets would be chaps like us who couldn’t think of anything better to do and soon we’d be gone home too and the streets would be empty and another night would be gone out of a man’s life and him none the wiser one way or the other.
‘Was that your cousin Marty I saw all by himself in the doorway next that bloke who met the sheila, Ned?’ Sid suddenly asked.
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘It was him all right, poor bastard,’ Wally said.
I pricked up my ears at that. My cousin Marty
wasn’t the sort of chap you talked about with that particular tone in your voice. He was rather a big shot in the eyes of our crowd. A good five or six years older than any of us, he must have been twenty-two or twenty-three, and he used to earn good money before the slump. A plasterer he was, by trade. But he’d been one of the first to be turned off when things got tough because, though he was good at his job, he had a terrible temper and was too handy with his fists. A big joker, he was, with reach and height, and they used to say that if only he’d do a bit more training there wasn’t a pro in the business he couldn’t have put on his back for the count. As it was he’d made quite a name for himself round the town as a fighter and once when I was at the barber’s and got fed up with the way slick little Basset kept taking me for granted because I didn’t know what was going to win the Gore Cup I’d managed to get in casually that Marty was my cousin and after that Basset could never do enough for me.
‘What do you mean, “poor bastard”?’ Sid was saying.
‘Didn’t you hear? The trouble with you, Sid, is you never hear anything now you’ve got your teeth out.’
‘Come on, come on, know-all. What’s it all about?’
‘Yes, what was it, Wally?’ I asked; for I could tell Wally was wishing he’d kept his mouth shut, knowing Marty was my cousin.
‘Well, it’s only what they’re saying, Ned, and there mightn’t be anything in it, though I have noticed Marty hasn’t been about much lately. You know how you’d always see him and Dulcie Moore round together of a Saturday and Sunday night?’
‘That’s right,’ Sid said, glad to get in on the inside again. ‘I saw them coming out of the Rose Gardens about two in the morning the night of Ginger Foyle’s keg-party and they were always at the Waikiwi dances together.’
‘Well, they say he put her up the spout. And then he got some old dame who hangs out in Georgetown to fix her up. Of course, that’s happening all the time all over the place, you know, and nobody ever thinks a thing about it as long as no one gets caught.’ This was for me. ‘But the trouble this time was that something went wrong and she got blood-poisoning or something, and now she’s in hospital and they say the johns have been at her all the time beside her bed trying to find out who did it and who was the man. But so far she won’t say and the odds are she won’t pull through.’
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 67