SUSAN ABROAD A New Twist To The Hula And The Aloha

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29962, 25 October 1962, Page 2

SUSAN ABROAD A New Twist To The Hula And The Aloha

Whenever the going got tough on my journey around the world, I promised myself a last-lap rest-cure in Honolulu. Above all, I wanted to arrive home fresh and well, so that the family could share all the joys and none of the woes of my travels.

As things turned out it was just as well that by the time I reached this final stop-over I had shaken off all my tiredness and tensions and was bursting with rude health again. For Honolulu—l hate to say it—is not quite the same calm, relaxing, restorative resort that it used to be. It is still rapturously beautiful The climate is sheer heaven. The fruit is ambrosial, the flowers exquisite and lavish. The social whirl is gay and exciting, the fashions colourful and uninhibited, the private hospitality as warm and affectionate as ever. What is missing then? Well, I am sure I have never before written an article on Honolulu without mentioning "aloha" in the first three paragraphs—that wonderful palpable. pervasive, infectious spirit of communal lovingkindness that used to quiver in the very air of Hawaii, along with the intoxicating fragrance of frangipani and the sharp, sweet scent of pineapple. The aloha is still there, you discover soon enough, but it has somehow changed its tempo. It used to be a tender theme plucked on the heartstrings—or at the very least a steel guitar. Now—though I feel faithless saying it—it is a brisk tune rattled out on the cash register.

The muu-muu is massproduced. Plastic orchids vie with the precious real ones. You stand in a qdeue for your fish and poi under the banyan tree. And half-way through the hula cornea the übiquitous, the inescapable, the universal absurdity of the twist. I bought a newspaper each day and the headlines jumped up and hit me—murder, rape, babies found dead in ditches, one with its feet cut off to prevent footprint identification. Even as in San Francisco, women were buying police whistles in terror of the lurking dark. I turned on the radio each evening and listened to one long agonising countdown aftes arritby M the big bonis ftzw#. op- burst, too near to be ignored. The radio announcers made sick jokes about strontium-90 between endlessly repetitive recordings of the pain and poignancy of teen-age passion. Night after night unable to help myself. I hung over .the rail of the flowery lanai. breathing in the scented night, listening to the hush and whisper of palms and waves.

i watching the horizon for the • big bang, the crimson aurora. - the red shame. I always had company—- ; adults curiously excited, chil- , dren awed and bored, only > the teen-agers sensitively . aware and bewildered and re- ’ sentfuL Is it fair, I wondered, to feed them the pop parade and blow up their world? Never So Good Perhaps the next traveller i to return from Honolulu will • tell you that statehood has i brought unprecedented buoy- . ancy and prosperity, that i building is booming, business is booming, that the Hawaiians never had it so good and ’ shame on me for grizzling in , patadise. _ r Is it too late to agree that ’ in spite of statehood, in spite . of the business boom, in spite ! of the bombs it is still para- . dise indeed? Is it inconsistent ■ to admit that I had a lovely, lazy, languorous time in Honoi lulu, swam and slept and i danced and went on a fruit . diet and did a course in Japanese flower arrangement i and behaved like a proper > hedonist in spite of my niggly ■ conscience? In a black satin midnight. . full of stars and perfume, I drove to the airport for my ' last long flight and boarded ; the aircraft wreathed in lets, ' weighed down with parcels

and good wishes, wearing a cotton frock and carrying my new London suit on a hanger, my new London hat in a bandbox. Lucky to the last in all my flights. I had a whole bank of seats to myself all the way to Nandi and on to Whenuapai. so that I could stretch out and sleep like a babe. Half an hour out of Auckland, a tousled ragbag retired to the toilet compartment, hanger on arm, bandbox in hand. Ten minutes later a new pin emerged, startling the hostess into thinking she had a stowaway on board. And the next 20 minutes were the longest of the whole journey, as we dawdled down the coast, drifted down over the untroubled suburbs into the vivid green of New Zealand's welcome, and taxied with interminable slowness to the terminal In the few months since I had sped away from this same airport I had travelled some 40.000 miles, visited some 40 different countries, seen some wonderful sights, met some wonderful people. But there were no sights to compare, no people to compare, with my two tall streaks standing there on the tarmac, smiling into the sun. My heart beat furiously as the engines died away. I was home.