ANTI-DEPRESSION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21520, 17 June 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

ANTI-DEPRESSION

BY RAKIURA

RENEWAL OF HOPE

" lhere'll be a couple of people in to look over the place," announced Jim Morris gruffly at breakfast. " Expect they'll come about eleven o'clock." He volunteered no further information, but pushed his plate and chair back and left abruptly, ignoring the resentful look in Bessie Morris' eyes.

Just like him, thought Bessie bitterly. As close as an oyster. Treated you as if you were a housekeeper anil not a wife. Lot of thanks you got for having worked like a black on the farms that had made the money—helping with the cows, up at five o'clock all weathers, cooking, butter-making, selling poultry produce, keeping the vegetable garden going so that Jim could give undivided attention to the farm. •Of course, he had worked, too—worked like a nigger, really, just as she had. That was how they'd mado such big profits on the sale of the places they'd been on. Heavens, how they had worked! The years in between the first farm and the farmlet they were now on seemed no more than a dream, and Bessie was back in the past. She almost felt the old ache of utter physical weariness that had been the inevitable end of each day. Jim and she had usually dropped dead tired into bed, every muscle feeling the reaction of the day's toil, their minds drowsy yet contented. Yes, contented . . . funny to think how nappy they had been then, in spite of being tied for money, since every penny went, back into the farm. They had managed to get a lot of laughs out of life —Jim had been jolly and frank in those days, able t.o extract humour from every-day occurrences, cheerful in the face of adversity, bolstering her up when she felt blue. . . . It was only when things had become easy for him and he had started speculating that Jim had begun to change so drastically, that he had turned fropi a, husband into a stranger. They had bickered, of course, occasionally, in the earlier years, but no matter what the squabbles had been about there had always been a fundamental unity—a real one-ness—beneath the superficial differences. But that had vanished, too, since they had had so much leisure. Discontent All the time they had worked so hard they had planned what they would do, and what fun they would have, when they had " retired." It had seemed a mythical state then. In her battles with refractory ranges Bessie had comforted herself with thoughts of the electric stove she would have when they had enough money to live on, and Jim, on mornings when he hadn't felt up to it and had blessed the sixty cows that had to be milked, had visioned the time when he would have only one or two to attend to, and perhaps a few pigs. Now they had the electric stove and the electric hot water, the telephone and the radio—all the things they had so longed for —and Jim had just Blossom and Brownie to milk, and half a-dozen pigs to look after —and she and he were at loggerheads! Ah, well. . . one got used to these changes, or tried to make oneself believe that one did. The pain that had hurt so badly at first became more or less numbed, but returned sometimes with all its old sharpness, as it had this morning. All through the day it burned into Bessie. Life seemed unendurable on the basis it had latterly had. People thought she had everything she wanted —showed just what they knew! What a woman wanted was companionship and love, the rest didn't matter, and if she didn't have those two things nothing else was worth the having. That was the thought that constricted her heart as she set the tea-table. Jim would come in as usual, she supposed, moody and silent, laconic in his replies, self-contained and absorbed in his thoughts. Hard Hit There was his step. Yes, he was moody right enough. More so than usual. There was that little twitching of his left eyebrow that meant nervous tension too. Halfway through the meal he cleared his throat quickly and spoke: " Sold the place this morning. They want to come in within a month." Bessie's heart jumped, then beat dully and heavily. Jim was speaking again: " You'd best go to Emma's to live. I can give you a bit to live on. I've bought that other place I looked at a fortnight ago, back-country. It's no place for a woman and from the way things have been going we're better apart. You're not contented here and Emma's had no one with her since Bill died. There's nothing in this place these days—not enough to pay the jrntes. All ! right when I had a good bit coming in from that block of shops in town and the rest of my ' specs.' But they've fallen away to nothing lately—nothing but a drain paying rates and insurance and everything. I got let in a bit over one of the syndicates, too —pretty near cleaned me out. I'll get enough to keep you in clothes and pocket money though," he finished hurriedly. "Clothes and pocket money!" He must have been hard hit, then, if that was all he'd have left out of the income his investments had been bringing in! His tone was so elaborately casual, too, that he was obviously deeply upset. He bit fiercely on the stem of his pipe before he went on: " I made a pretty good sale over this place. Enough cash down to put a deposit on the farm I've bought and give me enough to keep me going for a while. Got the new place dirt cheap—fellow was too inexperienced and paid too big a price for it. Had to walk off. It's rough in parts—needs a thundering lot of work put into it, but at the price it's given away and it'll bo worth money in a few. years. Nearest neighbour five miles. House good enough for a bach." Side by Side "Good enough for a bach?" Bessio knew just what that description meant —a fuel range, ancient and troublesome, in all probability, no water laid on in the wash-house, the kitchen garden a wilderness, wash-days a nightmare, isolation, loneliness, backbreaking work. . . She looked across at him. There was a gleam of the old Jim in the way he was hunched over his pipe—in the way he was telling her something, for the first time for years, of his affairs, his difficulties, his hopes. Her mind flew back to those days when they had struggled and worked together and found .happiness in spite of hard times. Perhaps that happiness would come back if they fought together, side by side again. " Oh, Jim," cried Bessie with a rush of words, " let me come too. Let's work together. Let's—let's got back where we wero once. Going without things—l don't earo about that. It's only—going without—companionship—■ that hurts."

Jim gave her a long, direct glance. " There'll be plenty of other things to do without. It'd bo uphill in the best of times —and now there's a depression on!"

"Depression?" sang Bessie's heart. " There'll be no such thing if " . . . but all she could manage to say, inarticulately, but with her whole sold in her voice, was "Oh, Jim—lot's!" Jim's old smile flashed back, and in the steady look that passed between them the spirit of the old\companionship was reborn, as he acquiesced, "All right—let's!"