双语·像爱丽丝的小镇 Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When Jean Paget stepped down the gangway from the Constellation on to Darwin airport she was wildly and unreasonably happy. It is a fact, I think, that till that time she had never really recovered from the war. She had come to England when she was repatriated and she had done her job efficiently and well with Pack and Levy for two years or so, but she had done it in the manner of a woman of fifty. She lived, but she had very little zest for life. Deep in the background of her mind remained the tragedy of Kuantan, killing her youth. She had only been speaking the truth when she had told me once that she felt about seventy years old.

She landed at about eight-fifteen at night, after dark; as she was getting off the plane at Darwin, Qantas had booked a room for her at the Darwin Hotel. She stepped on to the concrete and was marshalled to the Customs office in the hangar; at the foot of the gangway there were three young men who scrutinized her carefully. At the time she took them for officials of the airport. It was only later that she found out that they were reporters on the staff of various Australian newspapers engaged in what must surely be the worst assignment in all journalism, meeting every aeroplane that lands on Darwin airport in the hope of finding a Prime Minister on board, or a woman with two heads.

One of them came up to her as soon as she was through the Customs; there had been nothing to make a story in this load of passengers. A happy-looking girl was a small dividend, however. He said,“Miss Paget? The stewardess tells me that you're getting off here and you're staying at the Darwin Hotel. Can I give you a lift into town? My name is Stuart Hopkinson; I represent the Sydney Monitor up here.”

She said,“That's terribly kind of you, Mr Hopkinson. I don't want to take you out of your way, though.”

He said,“I'm staying there myself.”He had a small Vauxhall parked outside the hanger; he took her suitcase and put it in the back seat and they got in, chatting about the Constellation and the journey from Singapore. And presently, as they drove past the remains of Vestey's meatworks, he said,“You're English, aren't you, Miss Paget?”She agreed.“Would you like to tell me why you're visiting Australia?”

She laughed.“Not very much, Mr Hopkinson. It's only something personal—it wouldn't make a story. Is this where I get out and walk?”

“You don't have to do that,”he said.“It was just a thought. I haven't filed a story for a week.”

“Would it help if I said that I thought Darwin was just wonderful? ‘London Typist thinks Darwin wonderful’?”

“We can't go panning London, not in the Monitor. Is that what you are, a typist?”

She nodded.

“Come out to get married?”

“I don't think so.”

He sighed.“I'm afraid you're not much good to me for a story.”

“Tell me, Mr Hopkinson,”she said,“how do the buses go from here to Alice Springs? I want to go down there, and I haven't got much money, so I thought I'd go by bus. That's possible, isn't it?”

“Sure,”he said.“One went this morning. You'll have to wait till Monday now; they don't run over the weekend.”

“How long does it take?”

“Two days. You start on Monday, stop at Daly Waters Monday night, and get in late on Tuesday. It's not too bad a journey, but it can be hot, you know.”

He put her down at the hotel and carried her bag into the lobby for her. She was lucky in that overcrowded place to get a room to herself, a room with a balcony overlooking the harbour. It was hot in Darwin, with a damp enervating heat that brought her out in streams of perspiration at the slightest movement. This was no novelty to her because she was accustomed to the tropics; she bolted the door and took off her clothes and had a shower, and washed some things in the hand basin, and lay down to sleep with a bare minimum of covering.

She woke early next morning and lay for some time in the cool of the dawn considering her position. It was imperative to her that she should find Joe Harman and talk to him; at the same time the meeting with Mr Hopkinson had warned her that there were certain difficulties ahead. However pleasant these young men might be, their duty was to get a story for the paper, and she had no desire whatever to figure in the headlines, as she certainly would do if the truth of her intentions became known.“Girl flies from Britain to seek soldier crucified for her...”It would be far easier if she were a man.

However, she wasn't. She set to work to invent a story for herself, and finally decided that she was going out to Adelaide to stay with her sister who was married to a man called Holmes who worked in the Post Office; that seemed a fairly safe one. She was travelling by way of Darwin and Alice Springs because a second cousin called Joe Harman was supposed to be working there but hadn't written home for nine years, and her uncle wanted to know if he was still alive. From Alice she would take the train down to Adelaide.

It didn't quite explain why she had come to Darwin in a Constellation, except that there is no other way to get to Darwin. Lying on her bed and cogitating this it seemed a pretty waterproof tale; when she got up and went downstairs for breakfast she decided to try it out on Stuart Hopkinson. She got her chance that morning as he showed her the way to the bus booking-office; she let it out in little artistic snippets over half an hour of conversation, and the representative of the Sydney Monitor swallowed it without question so that she became a little ashamed of herself.

He took her into a milk bar and stood her a Coca-Cola.“Joe Harman...”he said.“What was he doing at Alice nine years ago?”

She sucked her straw.“He was a cowboy on a cattle farm,”she said innocently, and hoped she wasn't overdoing it.

“A stockman? Do you remember the name of the station?”

“Wollara,”she said.“That's the name, Wollara. That's near Alice Springs, isn't it?”

“I don't know,”he said.“I'll try and find out.”

He came back to her after lunch with Hal Porter of the Adelaide Herald.“Wollara's a good long way from Alice Springs,”said Mr Porter.“The homestead must be nearly a hundred and twenty miles away. You mean Tommy Duveen's place?”

“I think that's it,”she said.“Is there a bus there from Alice Springs?”

“There's no bus or any way of getting there except to drive there in a truck or a utility.”

Hopkinson said.“It's on one of Eddie Maclean's rounds, isn't it?”

“Now you mention it, I think it is.”Porter turned to Jean.“Maclean Airways run around most of those stations once a week, delivering the mail,”he said.“You may find that you could get there by plane. If so, that's much the easiest.”

Her ideas about reporters had been moulded by the cinema; it was a surprise to her to find that in real life they could be kind and helpful people with good manners. She thanked them with sincere gratitude, and they took her out for a run round Darwin in a car. She exclaimed at the marvellous, white sand beaches and the azure blue of the sea, and suggested that a bathing party might be a good thing.

“There's one or two objections,”Mr Porter said.“One is the sharks. They'll take you if you go out more than knee deep. Another is the alligators. Then there's the stone fish—he lies on the beach and looks just like a stone until you tread on him, and he squirts about a pint of poison into you. The Portuguese Men-o'-War aren't so good, either. But the thing that really puts me off is Coral Ear.”

“What's that?”

“A sort of growth inside your head that comes from getting this fine coral sand into your ear.”

Jean came to the conclusion that perhaps she wouldn't bathe in Darwin after all.

She got her bathe, however, because on Sunday they drove her forty miles or so southwards down the one road to a place called Berry Springs, a deep water hole in a river where the bathing was good. The reporters eyed her curiously when she appeared in her two-piece costume because the weeks that she had spent in native clothes in Kuala Telang had left her body tanned with sunburn in unusual places. It was the first mistake that she had made, and for the first time a dim suspicion crossed their minds that this girl held a story for them if they could only get it out of her.

“Joe Harman...”said Hal Porter thoughtfully to Stuart Hopkinson.“I'm sure I've heard that name before somewhere, but I can't place it.”

As they drove back from the bathe the reporters told her about Darwin, and the picture they painted was a gloomy one.“Everything that happens here goes crook,”Hal Porter said.“The meatworks has been closed for years because of labour troubles—they got so many strikes they had to close it down. The railway was intended to go south to Alice and join up with the one from Alice down to Adelaide—go from north to south of the continent. It might have been some good if it had done that, but it got as far as Birdum and then stopped. God knows what it does now. This road has just about put the railway out of business—what business it ever had. There used to be an ice factory, but that's closed down.”He paused.“Everywhere you go round here you'll see ruins of things that have been tried and failed.”

“Why is that?”Jean asked.“It's not a bad place, this. It's got a marvellous harbour.”

“Of course it has. It ought to be a great big port, this place—a port like Singapore. It's the only town of any size at all on the north coast. I don't know. I've been up here too long. It gives me the willies.”

Stuart Hopkinson said cynically,“It's got outbackitis.”He smiled at Jean.“You'll see a lot of this in Australia, specially in the north.”

She asked,“Is Alice Springs like this?”It was so very different from the glowing recollections of Alice that Joe Harman had poured out to her, six years before.

“Oh, well,”said Hopkinson,“Alice is different. Alice is all right.”

“Why is it different?”she asked.

“I don't really know. It's railhead, of course, for trucking cattle down to Adelaide—that's one thing. But it's a go-ahead place is Alice; all sorts of things go on there. I wish to God the Monitor'ld send me there instead of here.”

She said goodbye to her two friends that night, and started at dawn next morning in the bus for Alice Springs. The bus was a big, modern Bedford, heavily streamlined; it towed a trailer carrying goods and luggage. It was comfortable enough although not air-conditioned; it cruised down the wide, empty tarmac road at fifty miles an hour, hour after hour, manned by ex-naval crew.

As far as Katherine, where the bus stopped for lunch, the country was well wooded with rather stunted eucalyptus trees, which Jean discovered were called gums. Between these trees were open meadows of wild land, ungrazed, unused, and uninhabited. She discussed this country with a fellow traveller, a bank inspector on his way to Tennant Creek, and she was told that all this coastal belt was useless for farming for some reason that she could not understand. After Katherine the country gradually became more arid, the trees more scattered and desiccated, till by the evening they were running through a country that was near to desert.

At dusk they stopped for the night at a place called Daly Waters. Daly Waters, she discovered, was a hotel, a post office, a large aerodrome, and nothing else whatsoever. The hotel was a rambling collection of single-storey wooden huts or dormitories for men and for women, strange to Jean but comfortable enough. She strolled outside before tea, in the dusk, and looked around. In front of the hotel three young men were squatting on their heels with one leg extended in the peculiar attitude that Joe Harman had used; they wore a sort of jodhpur trouser and elastic-sided boots with a very thin sole, and they were playing cards upon the ground, intent upon their game. She realized that she was looking at her first ringers.

She studied them with interest; that was how Joe Harman would have looked before he joined the army. She resisted an absurd temptation to go up to one of them and ask if they knew anything about him.

The bus started at dawn next day, and drove on southwards down the tarmac road, past Milners Lagoon and Newcastle Waters and Muckety Bore to Tennant Creek. As they went the vegetation grew sparser and the sun grew hotter, till by the time they stopped at Tennant Creek for a meal and a rest the country had become pure sand desert. They went on after an hour, driving at fifty to fifty- five miles an hour down the scorching road past tiny places of two or three houses dignified with a name, Wauchope and Barrow Creek and Aileron. Toward evening they found themselves running towards the Macdonnell Ranges, lines of bare red hills against the pale blue sky, and at about dusk they ran slowly into Alice Springs and drew up at the Talbot Arms Hotel.

Jean went into the hotel and got a room opening on to a balcony, the hotel being a bungalow-type building with a single storey, like practically every other building in Alice Springs. Tea was served immediately after they arrived, and she had already learned that in Australian country hotels unless you are punctual for your meals you will get nothing. She changed her dress and strolled out in the town after tea, walking very slowly down the broad suburban roads, examining the town.

She found it as Joe Harman had described it to her, a pleasant place with plenty of young people in it. In spite of its tropical surroundings and the bungalow nature of the houses there was a faint suggestion of an English suburb in Alice Springs which made her feel at home. There were the houses standing each in a small garden fenced around or bordered by a hedge for privacy; the streets were laid out in the way of English streets with shade trees planted along the kerbs. Shutting her eyes to the Macdonnell Ranges, she could almost imagine she was back in Bassett as a child. She could now see well what everybody meant by saying Alice was a bonza place. She knew that she could build a happy life for herself in this town, living in one of these suburban houses, with two or three children, perhaps.

She found her way back to the main street and strolled up it looking at the shops. It was quite true; this town had everything a reasonable girl could want—a hairdressing saloon, a good dress shop or two, two picture houses.... She turned into the milk bar at about nine o'clock and bought herself an ice-cream soda. If this was the outback, she thought, there were a great many worse places.

Next morning, after breakfast, she went and found the manageress, a Mrs Driver, in the hotel office. She said,“I want to try and get in touch with a second cousin of mine, who hasn't written home for ten years.”She told her story about being on her way from London to Adelaide to stay with her sister.“I told my uncle that I'd come this way and stop in Alice Springs and try and find out something about Joe.”

Mrs Driver was interested.“What's his name?”

“Joe Harman.”

“Joe Harman! Worked out at Wollara?”

“That's right,”Jean said.“Do you know if he's there still?”

The woman shook her head.“He used to come in here a lot just after the war, but he was only here about six months. I only came here in the war; I don't know about before that. He was a prisoner of the Japs, he was. They treated him terribly. Came back with scars on his hands where they'd put nails right through, crucified him, or something.”

Jean expressed surprise and horror.“Do you know where he is now?”

“I don't know, I'm sure. Maybe one of the boys would know.”

Old Art Foster, the general handyman who had lived in Alice Springs for thirty years said,“Joe Harman? He went back to Queensland where he come from. He was at Wollara for about six months after the war, and then he got a job as station manager at some place up in the Gulf country.”

Jean asked,“You don't know his address?”

“I don't. Tommy Duveen would know it, out at Wollara.”

“Does he come into town much?”

“Aye, he was in town on Friday. He comes about once every three or four weeks.”

Jean asked innocently,“I suppose Joe Harman took his family with him when he went to Queensland. They aren't living here still, are they?”

The old man stared at her.“I never heard Joe Harman had a family. He wasn't married, not so far as I know.”

She said defensively,“My uncle back in England thinks he's married.”

“I never heard nothing of a wife,”the old man said.

Jean thought about this for a minute, and then said to Mrs Driver,“Is there a telephone at Wollara? I mean, if Mr Duveen knows his address, I'd like to ring him up and get it.”

“There isn't any telephone,”she said.“They'll be speaking on the radio schedule morning and evening from Wollara, of course.”There was an extensive radio network operated by the Flying Doctor service from the hospital; morning and evening an operator at the hospital sat down to call up forty or fifty stations on the radio telephone to transmit messages, pass news, and generally ascertain that all was well. The station housewife operated the other end.“Mrs Duveen is sure to be on the air tonight because her sister Amy is in hospital here for a baby and Edith'll want to know if it's come off yet. If you write out a telegram and take it down to Mr Taylor at the hospital, he'll pass it to them tonight.”

Jean went back to her room and wrote out a suitable cable and took it down to the hospital to Mr Taylor, who agreed to pass it to Wollara.“Come back at about eight o'clock, and I may have the answer if they know the address right off; if they've got to look it up they'll probably transmit it on the schedule tomorrow morning.”That freed her for the remainder of the day, and she went back to the milk bar for another ice-cream.

In the milk bar she made a friend, a girl called Rose Sawyer. Miss Sawyer was about eighteen and had an Aberdeen terrier on a lead; she worked in the dress shop in the afternoons. She was very interested to hear that Jean came from England, and they talked about England for a time.“How do you like Alice?”she asked presently, and there was a touch of conventional scorn in her tone.

“I like it,”Jean said candidly.“I've seen many worse places. I should think you could have a pretty good time here.”

The girl said,“Well, I like it all right. We were in Newcastle before, and then Daddy got the job of being bank manager here and we all thought it would be awful. All my friends said these outback places were just terrible. I thought I wouldn't be able to stick it, but I've been here fifteen months now and it's not so bad.”

“Alice is better than most, isn't it?”

“That's what they say—I haven't been in any of the others. Of course, all this has come quite recently. There weren't any of these shops before the war, they say.”

Jean learned a little of the history of the town and she was surprised at the rapidity of its growth. In 1928 it was about three houses and a pub; that was the year when the railway reached it from Oodnadatta. The Flying Doctor service started about 1930 and small hospitals were placed about in the surrounding districts. The sisters married furiously, and Jean learned that most of the older families were those of these sisters. By 1939 the population was about three hundred; when the war came the town became a military staging point. After the war the population had risen to about seven hundred and fifty in 1945, and when Jean was there it was about twelve hundred.“All these new houses and shops going up,”Miss Sawyer said.“People seem to be coming in here all the time now.”

She suggested that Jean should come swimming in the late afternoon.“Mrs Maclean's got a lovely swimming-pool, just out by the aerodrome,”she said.“I'll ring her up and ask if I can bring you.”

She called for Jean that afternoon at five o'clock and Jean joined the swimming party at the pool; sitting and basking in the evening sun and looking at the gaunt line of Mount Ertwa, she became absorbed into the social life of Alice Springs. Most of the girls and married women were under thirty; she found them kindly, hospitable people, well educated and avid for news of England. Some spoke quite naturally of England as“home”though none of them had ever been there; each of them cherished the ambition that one day she would be able to go“home”for a trip. By the end of the evening Jean was in a humble frame of mind; these pleasant people knew so much about her country, and she knew so very little about theirs.

She strolled down to the hospital in the cool night, after tea. Mrs Duveen had not been able to give Joe Harman's address offhand, but she confirmed that he was managing a station somewhere in the Gulf country. She would ask her husband and send a message on the morning schedule.

That night Jean thought a good deal about what she would do when she did get the address. It was clear now that her first apprehensions were unfounded; Joe Harman had made a good recovery from his injuries, and was able to carry on his work in the outback. She was amazed that this could be so, but the man was tough. Though there was no compelling need for her to find him now, she felt that it would be impossible to leave Australia without seeing him again; too much had passed between them. She did not fear embarrassment when she met him. She felt that she could tell him the truth frankly; that she had heard of his survival and had come to satisfy herself that he was quite all right. If anything should happen after that, well, that would be just one of those things.

She drifted into sleep, smiling a little.

She went down to the hospital in the morning after the radio schedule and learned that Joe Harman was the manager of Midhurst station, near Willstown. She had never heard of Willstown before; Mr Taylor obligingly got out a map of Australia designed to show the various radio facilities and frequencies of the outback stations, and showed her Willstown at the mouth of the Gilbert River on the Gulf of Carpentaria.

“What sort of a place is it?”she asked him.“Is it a place like this?”

He laughed.“It's a fair cow up there.”He studied the map.“It's got an air-strip, anyway. I don't suppose it's got much else. I've never been there, and I've never heard of anyone who had.”

“I'm going there,”she said.“I've got to see Joe Harman, after coming all this way.”

“It's likely to be rough living,”he said.“Oh my word.”

“Would there be a hotel?”

“Oh, there'll be a hotel. They've got to have their grog.”

She left the hospital and went thoughtfully to the milk bar; as she ordered her ice-cream soda, it occurred to her that it might be a long time before she had another. When she had finished her soda she walked up the street a little way and turned into the magazine and book shop, and bought a map of Australia and a bus timetable and an airline timetable. Then she went back to the milk bar and had another ice-cream soda while she studied this literature.

Presently Rose Sawyer came into the milk bar with her dog. Jean said,“I've found out where Joe Harman lives. Now I've got to find out how to get there. There doesn't seem to be a bus going that way at all.”

They studied the timetables together.“It's going to be much easiest to fly,”said Rose.“That's how everybody goes, these days. It's more expensive, but it may not be in the long run because you've got so many meals and hotels if you try and go by land. I should take the Maclean service to Cloncurry, next Monday.”

It meant staying a few days more in Alice Springs, but it seemed the best thing to do.“You could come and stay with us,”said Rose.“Daddy and Mummy would love to have somebody from England. It's not very nice in the hotel, is it? I've never been in there, of course.”

“It's a bit beery,”said Jean. She was already aware of the strict Australian code, that makes it impossible for a woman to go into a bar.“I would like to do that, if you're sure it wouldn't be a lot of trouble.”

“We'd love to have you. It's so seldom one can talk to anyone that comes from England.”They walked round to the Sawyers' house; on the way they met Mrs Maclean, fair-haired and youthful, pushing her pram. They stopped, and Jean said,“I've got to go to Willstown in the Gulf country to see Joe Harman. Can I get a seat on your plane on Monday as far as Cloncurry?”

“I should think you could. I'm just going to the office; I'll tell them to put you down for Monday. Shall I ask them to arrange the passage for you from Cloncurry on to Willstown? I think you can get there direct from the Curry, but they'll find out that and make the booking if you want.”

“That's awfully good of you,”said Jean.“I would like them to do that.”

“Okay. Coming down to the pool this evening?”

“Yes, please.”

They went on to the Sawyer house, a pleasant bungalow with a rambler rose climbing over it, standing in a small garden full of English flowers, with a sprinkler playing on the lawn. Mrs Sawyer was grey-haired and practical; she made Jean welcome.“Much better for you to be here with us than in that nasty place,”she said, with all of an Australian woman's aversion to hotels.“It'll be nice having you, Miss Paget. Rose was telling us about you yesterday. It's nice to meet somebody from home.”

She went back to the hotel to pack her suitcase, and on the way she stopped at the Post Office. She spent a quarter of an hour sucking the end of a pencil, trying to word a telegram to Joe Harman to tell him that she was coming to see him. Finally she said,

Heard of your recovery from Kuantan atrocity quite recently perfectly delighted stop I am in Australia now and coming up to Willstown to see you next week.

Jean Paget

She took her suitcase round to the Sawyers' house in a taxi, and settled in with them. She stayed with these kind people for four days. On the third day she could not bear to go on lying to them; she told Rose and her mother what had happened in Malaya, and why she was looking for Joe Harman. She begged them not to spread the story; she was terribly afraid that it would get into the papers. They agreed to this, but asked her to tell her story again to Mr Sawyer when he came back from the office.

Mr Sawyer had a lot to say that interested her that evening.“Joe Harman may be on to a good thing up there,”he said.“The Gulf country's not much just at present, but he's a young man, and things can happen very quickly in Australia. This town was nothing twenty years ago, and look at it now! The Gulf's got one thing in its favour, and that's rain. We get about six or seven inches a year up here—about a quarter of what London gets. Up where Joe Harman is they probably get thirty inches—more than England does. That's bound to tell in the long run, you know.”

He sucked at his pipe.“Mind you,”he said,“it's not much good to them, that rainfall, because it all comes in two months and runs off into the sea. It's not spread out all the year round, like yours is in England. But I met a chap from home last year, and he said most of your water would run off into the sea, in England, if you hadn't got a weir every three miles or so on every river. That's what Australia hasn't got around to yet—water conservation on the stations. They're doing a little at it, but not much.”

In the days she spent with the Sawyers, Jean inevitably heard about Rose Sawyer's love life, which was not so far very serious. It chiefly centred round a Mr Billy Wakeling, who built roads when he could get a road to build.“He did awfully well in the war,”she told Jean.“He was a captain when he was twenty-three. But he's nothing to compare with your Joe Harman. He hasn't been crucified for me yet...”

“I'm not in love with Joe Harman,”Jean said with some dignity.“I just want to know that he's all right.”

Rose was still looking round for work that would suit her.

“I like a shop,”she said.“I couldn't ever learn shorthand, like you do. I like a shop all right, but I don't know that the dress shop is much catch. I can never tell what suits a person till I see it on, so I don't think I'll ever be a dress designer. I'd like to run a milk bar, that's what I'd like to do. I think it must be ever such fun, running a milk bar...”

Jean visited Mr Sawyer at the back in his professional capacity, and arranged for him to transfer to Willstown any credits that might come for her account after she had gone. She left Alice Springs on Monday morning with regret, and the Sawyers and Macleans were sorry to see her go.

She flew all that day in a Dragonfly, and it was a very instructive day for her. The machine did not go directly to Cloncurry, but zigzagged to and fro across the wastes of Central Australia, depositing small bags of mail at cattle stations and picking up stockmen and travellers to drop them off after a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles. They landed eight or ten times in the course of the day, at Ammaroo and Hatches Creek and Kurundi and Rockhampton Downs and many other stations; at each place they would get out of the plane and drink a cup of tea and gossip with the station manager or owner, and get back into the plane and go on their way. By the end of the day Jean Paget knew exactly what the homestead of a cattle station looked like, and she was beginning to have a very good idea of what went on there.

They got to Cloncurry at dusk, a fairly extensive town on a railway that ran eastward to the sea at Townsville. Here she was in Queensland, and she heard for the first time the slow, deliberate speech of the Queenslander that reminded her of Joe Harman at once. She was driven into town in a very old open car and deposited at the Post Office Hotel; she got a bedroom but tea was over, and she had to go down the wide, dusty main street to a café for her evening meal. Cloncurry, she found, had none of the clean glamour of Alice Springs; it was a town redolent of cattle, with wide streets through which to drive the herds down to the stockyards, many hotels, and a few shops. All the houses were of wood with red-painted corrugated iron roofs; the hotels were of two storeys, but very few of the other houses were more than bungalows.

She had to spend a day here, because the air service to Normanton and Willstown ran weekly on a Wednesday. She went out after breakfast while the air was still cool and walked up the huge main street for half a mile till she came to the end of the town, and she walked down it a quarter of a mile till she came to the other end. Then she went and had a look at the railway station, and, having seen the aerodrome, with that she had exhausted the sights of Cloncurry. She looked in at a shop that sold toys and newspapers, but they were sold out of all reading matter except a few dressmaking journals; as the day was starting to warm up she went back to the hotel. She managed to borrow a copy of the Australian Women's Weekly from the manageress of the hotel and took it up to her room, and took off most of her clothes and lay down on her bed to sweat it out during the heat of the day. Most of the other citizens of Cloncurry seemed to be doing the same thing.

She revived shortly before tea and had a shower, and went out to the café for an ice-cream soda. Stupefied by the heavy meal of roast beef and plum pudding that the Queenslanders call“tea”she sat in a deckchair for a little in the dusk of the veranda, and went to bed again at about eight o'clock.

She was called before dawn, and was out at the aerodrome with the first light. The aircraft this time was a vintage Dragon, which wandered round the cattle stations as on the previous flight, Canobie and Wandoola and Milgarra. About midday, after four or five landings, they came to the sea, a desolate marshy coast, and shortly after that they put down at Normanton. Half an hour later they were in the air again for Constance Downs station; they had a cup of tea here and a chat with the manager's wife, and took off on the last leg to Willstown.

They got there about the middle of the afternoon, and Jean got a bird's-eye view of the place as they circled for a landing. The country was well wooded with gum trees and fairly green; the Gilbert River ran into the sea about three miles below the town. There was deep, permanent water in it as far up as Willstown and beyond, because she could see a wooden jetty, and the river ran inland out of sight into the heat haze with water in it as far as she could see. All the other watercourses, however, seemed to be dry.

The town itself consisted of about thirty buildings, very widely scattered on two enormous intersecting streets or areas of land, for the streets were not paved. Only one building, which she later learned to be the hotel, was of two storeys. From the town dirt tracks ran out into the country in various directions. That was all that one could see of Willstown, that and a magnificent aerodrome put there in the war for defence purposes, with three enormous tarmac runways each a mile long.

They landed upon one of these huge runways, and taxied towards a truck parked at the runway intersection; this truck was loaded with two barrels of petrol and a semi-rotary pump for refuelling. The pilot said to Jean as he came down the cabin,“You're getting off here, Miss Paget? Is anyone meeting you?”

She shook her head.“I want to see a man who's living in this district, on one of the stations. I'll have to go to the hotel, I think.”

“Who is it? Al Burns, the Shell agent out there on the truck, he knows everybody here.”

She said,“Oh, that's a good idea. I want to see Mr Joe Harman. He's manager of Midhurst station.”

They got out of the aeroplane together.“Morning, Al,”the pilot said.“She'll take about forty gallons. I'll have a look at the oil in a minute. Is Joe Harman in town?”

“Joe Harman?”said the man in the truck. He was a lean, dark-haired man of forty or so.“Joe Harman's in England. Went there for a holiday.”

Jean blinked, and tried to collect her thoughts. She had been prepared to hear that Harman was out on his property or even that he was away in Cairns or Townsville, but it was absurd to be told that he was in England. She was staggered for a moment, and then she wanted to laugh. She realized that the men were looking at her curiously.“I sent him a telegram to say that I was coming,”she said foolishly.“I suppose he didn't get that.”

“Couldn't have done,”said Al Burns slowly.“When did you send it?”

“About four or five days ago, from Alice Springs.”

“Oh no, he wouldn't have got that. Jim Lennon might have it, out at Midhurst station.”

“That's dinky-die is it?”the pilot asked.“He's gone to England?”

“Went about a month ago,”the man said.“Jim Lennon said the other night that he'd be back about the end of October.”

The pilot turned to Jean.“What will you do, Miss Paget? Do you want to stay here now? It's not much of a place, you know.”

She bit her lip in thought.“When will you be taking off?”she asked.“You're going back to Cloncurry?”

“That's right,”he replied.“We're going back to Normanton tonight and night-stopping there, and back to the Curry tomorrow morning. I'm going into town now while Al fills her up. Take off in about half an hour.”

Cloncurry was the last place that she wanted to go back to.“I'll have to think about this,”she said.“I'll have to stay in Australia, till I've seen Joe Harman. Cairns is a nice place to stay, isn't it?”

“Oh, Cairns is a bonza town,”he said.“Townsville, too. If you've got to wait six or eight weeks you don't want to wait here, Miss Paget.”

“How could I get to Cairns?”she asked.

“Well,”he said.“You could come back with me to Cloncurry and then go by train to Townsville and up to Cairns. I don't quite know how long that would take in the train—it must be between six and seven hundred miles. Or you could wait here till next Wednesday, today week, and go by the Dakota straight to Cairns in about two and a half hours.”

“How long would the train take, from Cloncurry to Cairns?”

“Oh, I don't know about that. I don't think they go every day from Townsville to Cairns, but I'm not really sure. I think you'd have to allow three days.”He paused.“Of course, the best way would be to fly from Cloncurry to Townsville and then fly up to Cairns.”

“I know.”She was getting very sensitive of the cost of flying these vast distances, but the alternative of three days in an outback train in sweltering heat was almost unbearable.“It'ld be much cheaper to stay here and go by the Dakota next week, wouldn't it?”

The pilot said,“Oh, much. From here to Cairns would cost you ten pounds fifteen shillings. Flying back to Cloncurry and then on to Townsville and Cairns would be about thirty pounds.”

“I suppose the hotel here is quite cheap?”

“About twelve and six a day, I should think.”He turned to the Shell agent, busy with the fuel.“Al, how much does Mrs Connor charge?”

“Ten and six.”

Jean did a rapid mental calculation; by staying in this place and waiting for the Dakota in a week's time she would save sixteen pounds.“I think I'll stay here,”she said.“It's much cheaper than going back with you. I'll stay here and see Jim Lennon and wait for the Dakota next week.”

“You know what it's going to be like, Miss Paget?”

“Like the Post Office Hotel at Cloncurry?”

“It's a bit more primitive than that. The whatnot's out in the back yard.”

She laughed.“Will I have to lock myself in my room and take a revolver to bed with me?”

He was a little shocked.“Oh, you'll find it quite respectable. But, well, you may find it a little primitive, you know.”

“I expect I'll survive.”

By that time another truck had appeared, a lorry with a couple of men in it; they stared at Jean curiously. The pilot took her suitcase and put it in the back; the driver helped her up into the cab beside him. It was a relief to get out of the blazing sunshine into the shade again.

The driver said,“Staying in Willstown?”

“I wanted to see Joe Harman, but they say he's away. I'm staying here till next week if Mrs Connor can have me, and going on to Cairns in the Dakota.”

He looked at her curiously.“Joe Harman's gone to England. You're English, aren't you?”

The truck moved off down the wide tarmac runway.“That's right,”she replied.

He beamed at her.“My mother and my dad, they both came from England. My dad, he was born in Lewisham, that's part of London, I think, and my mother, she came from Hull.”He paused.“My name's Small,”he said.“Sam Small, like the chap with the musket.”

The truck left the runway and began bumping and swaying over the earth track leading to the town. Dust rose into the cab, the engine roared, and blue fumes enveloped them; every item of the structure creaked and rattled.“Why did Joe Harman go to England?”she shouted above the din.“What did he go for?”

“Just took a fancy, I think,”Mr Small replied.“He won the Casket couple of years back.”This was Greek to her.“There's not a lot to do upon the stations, this time of the year.”

She shouted,“Do you know if there's a room vacant at the hotel?”

“Oh, aye, there'll be a room for you. You just out from England?”

“Yes.”

“What's the rationing like at home, now?”

She shouted her information to him as the truck bumped and swayed across the landscape to the town. A wooden shack appeared on one side of the track, and fifty yards on there was another on the left; there was another some distance ahead, and they were in the main street. They drew up in front of a two-storeyed building with a faded signboard on the first-floor veranda, AUSTRALIAN HOTEL.“This is it,”said Mr Small.“Come on in, and I'll find Mrs Connor.”

The Australian Hotel was a fair-sized building with about ten small bedrooms opening on to the top floor veranda. It had wooden floors and wooden doors; the whole of the rest of it was built of corrugated iron on a wood framework. Jean was accustomed by that time to the universal corrugated iron roofs, but a corrugated iron wall to her bedroom was a novelty.

She waited on the upstairs veranda while Mr Small went to find Mrs Connor; the veranda had one or two beds on it. When the landlady appeared she was evidently only just awake; she was a tall, grey-haired determined woman of about fifty.

Jean said,“Good afternoon. My name's Jean Paget, and I've got to stop here till next week. Have you got a room?”

The woman looked her up and down.“Well, I don't know, I'm sure. You travelling alone?”

“Yes. I really came to see Joe Harman, but they tell me he's away. I'm going on to Cairns.”

“You just missed the Cairns aeroplane.”

“I know. They say I'll have to wait a week for the next one.”

“That's right.”The woman looked around.“Well, I don't know. You see, the men sleep out on this balcony, often as not. That wouldn't be very nice for you.”

Sam Small said,“What about the two back rooms, Ma?”

“Aye, she could go there.”She turned to Jean.“It's on the back balcony, looks out over the yard. You'll see the boys all going to the gents, but I can't help that.”

Jean said,“I expect I'll survive that.”

“You been in outback towns before?”

She shook her head.“I've only just come out from England.”

“Is that so! What's it like in England now? Do you get enough to eat?”

Jean said her piece again.

“I got a sister married to an Englishman,”the woman said.“Living at a place called Goole. I send her home a parcel every month.”

She took Jean and showed her the room. It was clean and with a good mosquito net; it was small, but the passage door was opposite the double window opening on to the balcony, giving a clear draught through.“Nobody don't come along this balcony, except Anne—she's the maid. She sleeps in this other room, and if you hear any goings on at night I hope you'll let me know. I got my eye upon that girl.”She reverted to the ventilation.“You leave your door open a chink, prop your case against it so that no one can't come barging in by mistake, and have the windows open, and you'll get a nice draught through. I never had no difficulty sleeping in this place.”

She glanced down at Jean's hand.“You ain't married?”

“No.”

“Well, there'll be every ringer in this district coming into town to have a look at you. You better be prepared for that.”

Jean laughed.“I will.”

“You a friend of Joe Harman, then?”

“I met him in the war,”Jean said.“In Singapore, when we were both waiting for a passage home.”It was nearer to the truth than her last lie, anyway.“Then as I was in Australia I sent him a telegram to say I'd come and see him. I didn't get an answer so I came here anyway. But he's gone walkabout.”

The woman smiled.“You picked up some Aussie slang.”

“Joe Harman taught me that one, when I met him in the war.”

Sam Small brought up her suitcase; she thanked him, and he turned away, embarrassed. She went into her room and changed her damp clothes for dry ones, and went along to the bathroom and had a shower, and was ready for tea at half past six when the bell echoed through the corrugated iron building.

She found her way down to the dining-room. Three or four men were seated there already and they looked at her curiously; a well-developed girl of sixteen whom she came to know as Annie indicated a separate small table laid for one.“Roast beef, roast lamb, roast pork, roast turkey,”she said.“Tea or coffee?”

It was swelteringly hot still. Flies were everywhere in the dining-room; they lighted on Jean's face, her lips, her hands.“Roast turkey,”she said; time enough to try for a light meal tomorrow, when she knew the form.“Tea.”

A plate was brought to her heaped high with meat and vegetables, hot and greasy and already an attraction for the flies. Tea came, with milk out of a tin; the potatoes seemed to be fresh, but the carrots and the turnips were evidently tinned. She thought philosophically that the flies would probably result in dysentery but she knew what to do about that; she had plenty of sulphatriad to see her through the week. She ate about a quarter of the huge plate of food and drank two cups of tea; then she was defeated.

She got outside into the open air as soon as possible, escaping from the flies. On the downstairs veranda three feet above the level of the ground there were two or three deckchairs, a little distance from the entrance to the bar; She had seen nowhere else in the hotel where she could sit and she already knew enough about Australian conventions not to go near the bar; she went and sat down in one of these chairs wondering if by doing so she was offending against local manners.

She lit a cigarette and sat there smoking, looking at the scene. It was evening but the sun was still strong; the dusty great expanse that served as a street was flooded with a golden light. On the opposite side of the road, more than a hundred yards away, there was a fairly extensive single-storey building that had been built on to from time to time; this was labelled—Wm Duncan, General Merchant. There was no sign of any other shop in the town. Outside Mr Duncan's establishment three coloured Abo stockmen were gossiping together; one held the bridle of a horse. They were big, well-set-up young men, very like Negroes in appearance and, like Negroes, they seemed to have plenty to laugh about.

Further along the other side of the great street a six-inch pipe rose vertically from the ground to a height of about eight feet. A fountain of water gushed up from the top of this pipe and the water seemed to be boiling hot, because a cloud of steam surrounded the fountain, and the stream running away into the background was steaming along its length. A quarter of a mile away a small hut was built across the course of the stream so that the stream ran into the hut and out the other side, but Jean had yet to discover the purpose of this edifice.

A low murmur of voices reached her from the bar; from time to time a man passed her and went in through the open door. She saw no women in the place.

Presently a young man, passing by upon the road, smiled at her and said,“Good evening.”She smiled back at him, and said,“Good evening.”

He checked immediately, and she knew that she had started something. He said,“I saw you come in with Sam Small this afternoon. Came in the aeroplane, didn't you?”

He was a clean-looking young yokel; he walked with the typical swaying gait of the ringer, and he wore the green jodhpurs and the elastic-sided boots that marked his calling. It was no good trying to be standoffish.“That's right,”she said.“I came up from Cloncurry. Tell me, is that water natural?”

He looked where she was pointing.“Natural? That's a bore. Never seen one before?”

She shook her head.“I've only just come out from England.”

“From England? Oh my word.”He spoke in the slow manner of the outback.“What's it like in England? Do you get enough to eat?”

She said her piece again.“My Dad came from England,”he said.“From a place called Wolverhampton. Is that near where you live?”

“About two hundred miles,”she replied.

“Oh, quite close. You'll know the family then. Fletcher is the name. I'm Pete Fletcher.”

She explained to Pete that there were quite a lot of people in England, and reverted to the subject of the bore.“Does all the water that you get from bores come up hot like that?”

“Too right,”he said.“It's mineral, too—you couldn't drink that water. There's gas comes up with it as well. I'll light it for you if you'd like to see.”He explained that it would make a flame five or six feet high.“Wait till it gets a bit darker, and I'll light it for you then.”

She said that was terribly kind of him, and he looked embarrassed. Al Burn, the Shell agent and truck repairer came by and stopped to join them.“Got fixed up all right, Miss Paget?”

“Yes, thank you. I'm staying here till Wednesday and then going on to Cairns.”

“Good-oh. We don't see too many strange faces, here in Willstown.”

“I was asking Pete here about the bore. Pete, do the cattle drink that water?”

The boy laughed.“When they can't get nothing sweeter they'll drink that. You'll see that they won't touch it in the wet, but then in the dry you'll see them drinking it all right.”

“Some bores they won't touch,”said Al. He was rolling himself a cigarette.“They sunk a bore on Invergordon, that's a station between here and Normanton—over to the south a bit. They had to go down close on three thousand feet before they got the water and did it cost them something, oh my word. The bore crew, they were there close on three months. Then when they got the water it was stinking with the minerals and the cattle wouldn't touch it, not even in the dry. What's more, it wouldn't grow grass, either.”

Two more men had drifted up and joined the little gathering about her chair.“Tell me,”she said,“why is this town so spread out? Why aren't the houses closer together?”

One of the newcomers, a man of forty that she later learned to know as Tim Whelan, a carpenter, said,“There was houses all along here once. I got a photograph of this town took in 1905. I'll bring it and show you tomorrow.”

“Were there more people living here then?”

Al Burns said,“Oh my word. This was one of the gold towns, Miss Paget. Maybe you wouldn't know about that, but there was thirty thousand people living here one time.”

The other newcomer said,“Eight thousand. I saw that in a book.”

Al Burns said stubbornly,“My Dad always said there was thirty thousand when he come here first.”

It was evidently an old argument. Jean asked,“How many are there now?”

“Oh, I dunno.”Al turned to the others.“How many would you say now, Tim?”To Jean, aside, he said,“He builds the coffins so he ought to know.”

“A hundred and fifty,”said Mr Whelan.

Sam Small had joined them on the veranda.“There's not a hundred and fifty living in Willstown now. There's not more than a hundred and twenty.”He paused.“Living here in the town, not the stations, of course. Living right here in the town, not counting boongs.”

A slow wrangle developed, so they set to work to count them; Jean sat amused while the evening light faded and the census was taken. The result was a hundred and forty-six, and by the time that that had been determined she had heard the name and occupation of most people in the town.

“Were there goldmines here?”she asked.

“That's right,”said Mr Small.“They had claims by the hundred one time, all up and down these creeks, oh my word. There were seventeen hotels here, seventeen.”

Somebody else said,“Steamers used to come here from Brisbane in those days—all around Cape York and right up the river to the landing stage. I never see them myself, but that's what my old man told me.”

Jean asked,“What happened? Did the gold come to an end?”

“Aye. They got the stuff out of the creeks and the surface reefs, the stuff that was easy got. Then when they had to go deep and use a lot of machinery and that, it didn't pay. It's the same in all these towns. Croydon was the same, and Normanton.”

“They say they're going to start the mine in Croydon—open it again,”said somebody.

“They been talking like that ever since I can remember.”

Jean asked,“But what happened to the houses? Did the people go away?”

“The houses just fell down, or were pulled down to patch up others,”Al told her.“The people didn't stay here when the gold was done—they couldn't. There's only the cattle stations here now.”

The talk developed among the men, with Jean throwing in an occasional remark or question.“Ghost towns,”somebody said.“That's what they called the Gulf towns in a book that I read once. Ghost towns. That's because they're ghosts of what they were once, when the gold was on.”

“It didn't last for long,”somebody said.“1893 was the year that the first gold here was found, and there wasn't many people still living here in 1905.”

Jean sat while the men talked, trying to visualize this derelict little place as a town with eight thousand inhabitants, or thirty thousand; a place with seventeen hotels and houses thickly clustered in the angles of the streets. Whoever had planned the layout had dreamed a great dream; with people streaming in to take up claims and the population doubling itself every few days, the planner had had some excuse for dreaming of a New York of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Now all that remained was a network of rectangular tracks where once there had been streets of wooden houses; odd buildings alone remained among this network to show what had been the dream.

As the light faded Pete and Al went out and lit the bore for Jean. They struck half a dozen matches and got it to light; a flame shot upwards from it and lit up the whole town, playing and flickering amongst the water and the steam till finally it was extinguished by a vomit of water. They lit it again, and Jean admired it duly; it was clear that this was the one entertainment that the town provided, and they were doing their best to give her a good time.“It's wonderful,”she said.“I've never seen anything like that in England.”

They were duly modest.“Most towns around here have a bore like that, that you can light,”they said.

She was tired with her day of flying; at nine o'clock she excused herself from their company and they all wished her goodnight. She drew Al Burns a little to one side before she went.“Al,”she said.“I'd like to see Jim Lennon—he's the man at Midhurst, isn't he? I'd like to see him before I go on Wednesday. Will he be coming into town?”

“Saturday he might be in,”Al said.“I'd say that he'd be in here Saturday for his grog. If I hear of anybody going out that way I'll send him word and say that you're in town, and want to see him.”

“Do they work a radio schedule at Midhurst?”

He shook his head.“It's too close in town, it wouldn't be worth it. If anyone gets sick or has an accident they can get him into town here in an hour or so, and the sister has a radio at the hospital.”He paused.“There'll be someone going out that way in the next day or so. If not, and if Jim Lennon doesn't come in on Saturday, I'll run you out there in the truck on Sunday.”

“That's awfully kind of you,”she said.“I don't want to put you to that trouble.”

“It's no trouble,”he said.“Make a bit of a change.”

She went up to bed. The hotel was lit by electric light made in the backyard by an oil engine and generator set that thumped steadily outside her room till she heard the bar close at ten o'clock; at five past ten the engine stopped and all the lights went out. Willstown slept.

She was roused at five o'clock with the first light with the sounds of people getting up and washing; she lay dozing, listening to the early morning sounds. Breakfast was not till half past seven; she got up and had a shower and was punctual in the dining-room. She found that the standard breakfast in Willstown was half a pound of steak with two fried eggs on top of it; she surprised Annie very much by asking for one fried egg and no steak.“Breakfast is steak and eggs,”Annie explained patiently to this queer Englishwoman.

“I know it is,”said Jean.“But I don't want the steak.”

“Well, you don't have to eat it.”The girl was obviously puzzled.

“Could I have just one fried egg, and no steak?”asked Jean.

“You mean, just one fried egg on a plate by itself?”

“That's right.”

Food conversation in Willstown was evidently quite a new idea.“I'll ask Mrs Connor,”said Annie. She came back from the kitchen with a steak with two fried eggs on top.“We've only got the one breakfast,”she explained. Jean gave up the struggle.

She ventured out to the kitchen after breakfast and found Mrs Connor.“I've got a few things to wash,”she said.“Could I use your washtub, do you think? And—have you got an iron?”

“Annie'll do them for you,”Mrs Connor said.“Just give them to her.”

Jean had no intention of trusting her clothes to Annie.“She's got a lot of work to do,”she said,“and I've got nothing. I'll do them myself if I can borrow the tub.”

“Good-oh.”

Jean spent the morning washing and ironing in the back ground-floor veranda just outside the kitchen; in that dry, torrid place clothes hung out on a line were dry in ten minutes. In the kitchen the temperature must have been close on a hundred and twenty Fahrenheit; Jean made quick rushes in there to fetch her irons from the stove, and wondered at the fortitude of women who cooked three hot meals a day in such conditions. Annie came presently and stood around on the back veranda, furtively examining Jean's washing.

She picked up a carton of soap flakes.“How much of this do you put in the water?”

Jean said,“I think it's an ounce to a gallon of water, isn't it? I used to know. I put in just a bit. It tells you on the packet.”

The girl turned the packet over in her hands, scrutinizing it.“Where it says, DIRECTIONS FOR USE,”said Jean.

From the door behind her Mrs Connor said,“Annie don't read very well.”

The girl said,“I can read.”

“Oh, can you? Well then, read us out what's written on that packet.”

The girl put the carton down.“I ain't had much practice lately. I could read all right when I was at school.”

To ease the situation Jean said,“All you do is just go on putting in the soap flakes till the water lathers properly. It's different with different sorts of water, because of the hardness.”

“I use ordinary soap,”said Annie.“It don't come up so well as this.”

Presently the girl said,“Are you a nurse?”

Jean shook her head.“I'm a typist.”

“Oh, I thought you might be a nurse. Most women that come to Willstown are nurses. They don't stay here long. Six months, and then they've had enough.”

There was a pause.“If you'd been a nurse,”the girl said,“I'd have asked you for some medicine. I've been feeling ever so ill lately just after getting up. I was sick this morning.”

“That's bad,”said Jean cautiously. There did not seem to be much else to say.

“I think I'll go up to the hospital,”said Annie,“and ask Sister Douglas for some medicine.”

“I should do that,”said Jean.

In the course of the day she met most of the notable citizens of Willstown. She walked across to the store to try and buy some cigarettes, but only succeeded in buying a tin of tobacco and a packet of papers. While she was chatting to Mr Bill Duncan in the store and examining the piece of quartz with gold in it that he showed her, Miss Kenroy came in, the school teacher. Half an hour later, as Jean was walking back across the road to the hotel, Al Burns met her and wanted to introduce her to Mr Carter, the Shire Clerk.

She slept most of the afternoon upon her bed, in common with the rest of Willstown, when the day cooled off she came down to the lower veranda and sat there in a deckchair, as she had the previous evening. She had not long to wait before the ringers found her; they came one by one, diffidently, unsure of themselves before this English girl, and yet unable to keep away. She had a little circle of them squatting with her on the veranda presently.

She got them to talk about themselves; it seemed the best way to put them at their ease.“It's all right here,”said one.“It's good cattle country; more rain here than what you get down further south. But I'm off out of it next year. My brother, he's down at Rockhampton working on the railway. He said he'd get me in the gang if I went down and joined him.”

Jean asked,“Is it better pay down there?”

“Well, no. I don't think it's so good. We get five pounds seventeen and six here—that's all found, of course. That's for an ordinary stockrider.”

She was surprised.“That's not bad pay, is it? For a single man?”

Pete Fletcher said,“The pay's all right. Trouble is this place. There's nothing to do here.”

“Do you get a cinema here ever?”

“There's a chap supposed to come here every fortnight and show films in the Shire Hall—that building over there.”She saw a low, barnlike wooden structure.“He hasn't been for a month, but he's coming next week, Mr Carter says.”

“What about dances?”Jean asked.

There was a cynical laugh.“They try it sometimes, but it's a crook place for a dance. Not enough girls.”

Pete Fletcher said,“There's about fifty of us stockmen come into Willstown, Miss Paget, and there's two unmarried girls to dance with, Doris Nash and Susie Anderson. That's between the age of seventeen and twenty-two, say. Not counting the kids and the married women.”

One of the ringers laughed sourly.“Susie's more than twenty-two.”

Jean asked,“But what happens to all the girls? There must be more than that around here?”

“They all go to the cities for a job,”said somebody.“There's nothing for a girl to do in Willstown. They go to Townsville and Rockhampton—Brisbane, too.”

Pete Fletcher said,“That's where I'm going, Brisbane.”

Jean said,“Don't you like it on a cattle station, then?”She was thinking of Joe Harman and his love for the outback.

“Oh, the station's all right,”said Pete. He hesitated, uncertain how to put what he felt to this Englishwoman without incautiously using a rude word.“I mean,”he said,“a fellow's got a right to have a girl and marry, like anybody else.”

She stared at him.“It's really like that, is it?”

“It's a fair cow,”said somebody.“It's a fair cow up here. No kidding, lady. It's two unmarried girls for fifty men in Willstown. A fellow hasn't got a chance of marrying up here.”

Somebody else explained to her,“You see, Miss Paget, if a girl's a normal girl and got her head screwed on right—say, like it might be you—you wouldn't stay here. Soon as you were old enough to go away from home you'd be off to some place where you could get a job and make your own living, not have to depend on your folks all the time. My word, you would. The only girls that stay in Willstown are the ones who are a bit stupid and couldn't make out in any other place, or else ones who feel they've got to stay and look after the old folks.”

Somebody else said,“That kind take the old folks with them down to the city. Like Elsie Freeman.”

Jean laughed.“You mean, that if you stay in Willstown you'll finish up by marrying a girl who's not so hot.”

They looked over their shoulders, embarrassed.“Well, a fellow wants to look around a bit...”

“Who's going to run the stations if you all go down to the cities, looking round a bit?”Jean said.

“That's the manager's headache,”said Pete.“I've got headaches of my own.”

That evening shortly before tea a utility drove up, a battered old Chevrolet with a cab front and an open, truck-like body behind. It was driven by a man of about fifty with lean, sensitive features. Beside him sat a brown girl of twenty or twenty-five with a smooth skin and a serene face; she was not pure native, but probably a quarter white. She wore a bright red dress, and she carried a kitten, which was evidently a great amusement and interest to her. They passed into the hotel, the man carrying their bags; evidently they were staying for the night. At teatime Jean saw them in the dining-room sitting with the men at the other table, but they were keeping very much to themselves.

Jean asked Mrs Connor who they were, after tea.“That's Eddie Page,”she said.“He's manager of a station called Carlisle about a hundred miles out. The lubra's his wife; they've come in to buy stores.”

“Real wife?”asked Jean.

“Oh yes, he married her properly. One of the Bush Brothers was round that way last year, Brother Copeland, and he married them. They come in here from time to time. I must say, she never makes any trouble. She can't read or write, of course, and she doesn't speak much. Always got a kitten or a puppy along with her; that's what she likes.”

The picture of the man's sensitive, intelligent face came incongruously into Jean's mind.“I wonder what made him do that?”

Mrs Connor shrugged her shoulders.“Got lonely, I suppose.”

That night, when Jean went up to her bedroom, she saw a figure standing by the rail of the balcony that overlooked the backyard. There were two bedrooms only that opened on that balcony, her own and Annie's. In the dim light as she was going in at her window, she said,“Goodnight, Annie.”

The girl came towards her.“I been feeling awful bad,”she muttered.“Mind if I ask you something, Miss Paget?”

Jean stopped.“Of course, Annie. What's the matter?”

“Do you know how to get rid of a baby, Miss Paget?”

Jean had been prepared for that one by the morning's conversation; a deep pity for the child welled up in her.“I'm terribly sorry, Annie, but I don't. I don't think it's a very good thing to do, you know.”

“I went up to Sister Douglas and she said that's what's the matter with me. Pa'll beat the daylights out of me when he hears.”

Jean took her hand, and drew her into the bedroom.“Come in here and tell me about it.”

Annie said,“I know there's things you can do like eating something or riding on a horse or something like that. I thought perhaps you might have had to do it, and you'd know.”

“I've never had to do it, Annie. I don't know. Why don't you ask him to marry you and have it normally?”

The girl said,“I don't know how you'd tell which one it was. They'd all say it was one of the others, wouldn't they?”

It was a problem that Jean had never had to face.“I suppose they would.”

“I think I'll ask my sister Bessie. She might know. She had two kids afore getting married.”

It did not look as if Bessie's knowledge had been very useful to her. Jean asked,“Wouldn't the sister do anything to help you?”

“All she did was call me a wicked girl. That don't help much. Suppose I am a wicked girl. There's nothing else to do in a crook place like this.”

Jean did what she could to comfort her with words, but words were little good to Annie. Her interests were not moral, but practical.“Pa will be mad as anything when he gets to know about it,”she said apprehensively.“He'll beat the daylights out o'me.”

There was nothing Jean could do to help the girl, and presently they went to bed. Jean lay awake for a long time beset by human suffering.

She continued for the next two days in Willstown, sitting on the veranda and talking to the ringers, and visiting the various establishments in the town. Miss Kenroy took her and showed her the school. Sister Douglas showed her the hospital. Mr Carter showed her the Shire Hall with the pathetically few books that constituted the public library; Mr Watkins showed her the bank, which was full of flies, and Sergeant Haines showed her the Police Station. By the end of the week she was beginning to know a good deal about Willstown.

Jim Lennon came into town on Saturday, as predicted, for his grog. He came in an International utility that Jean learned was the property of Joe Harman, an outsize in motor cars with a truck body behind the front seat, furnished with tanks for seventy gallons of petrol and fifty gallons of water. Mr Lennon was a lean, bronzed, taciturn man.

“I got an air mail letter yesterday,”he said with the deliberation of the Queenslander.“Joe's starting on his way back from England in a ship. He said he'd be about the middle of October, so he thought.”

“I see,”said Jean.“I want to see him before I go back to England. I've arranged to fly to Cairns on Wednesday and wait there for him.”

“Aye. There's not much for you to do, I don't suppose, waiting round here. I'd say come out and live at Midhurst, but there's less to do there.”

“What's Joe been doing in England, Mr Lennon? Did he tell you what he was going for?”

The stockman laughed.“I didn't even know he was going. All I knew he was going down to Brisbane. Then I got a letter that he'd gone to England. I don't know why he went. He did say in this letter I got yesterday he'd seen a bonza herd of Herefords, belonging to a Sir Dennis Frampton. Maybe he's having bulls shipped out to raise the quality of the stock. He didn't tell me nothing.”

She gave him her address as the Strand Hotel in Cairns, and asked him to let her know when he got accurate news of Joe's arrival.

That evening as she was sitting in her deckchair on the veranda, Al Burns brought a bashful, bearded old man to her; he had disengaged the old man from the bar with some difficulty. He was carrying a sack.“Miss Paget,”he said,“want you to meet Jeff Pocock.”Jean got up and shook hands.“Thought you'd like to meet Jeff,”Al said cheerfully.“Jeff's the best alligator hunter in all Queensland. Aren't you, Jeff?”

The old man wagged his head.“I been huntin' 'gators since I was a boy,”he said.“I reckon I knows 'gators by this time.”

Al said,“He's got an alligator skin to show you, Miss Paget.”To the old man he said,“Show her your skin, Jeff. I bet she's never seen a skin like that in England.”

Jeff Pocock took the sack and opened it, and took out a small alligator skin rolled up.“'Course,”he said,“I cleaned and trimmed and tanned this one myself. Mostly we just salt them and sell 'em to the tannery like that.”He unrolled the skin before her on the floor of the veranda.“Pretty markings, ain't they? I bet you never seen a skin like that in England.”

The sight of it brought back nostalgic memories to Jean of red buses on the Great West Road at Perivale, and Pack and Levy Ltd, and rows of girls sitting at the work benches making up alligator-skin shoes and alligator-skin handbags and alligator-skin dressing-cases. She laughed.“I've seen hundreds of them in England,”she replied.“This is one thing I really know about. I used to work in a factory that made these skins up into handbags and dressing-cases.”She picked up the skin and handled it.“Ours were harder than this, I think. You've done the curing very well, Jeff.”

Two or three other men had drifted up; her story was repeated back and forth in other words, and she told them all about Pack and Levy Ltd. They were very interested; none of them knew much about the skins after they had left the Gulf country.“I know as they make shoes of them,”said Jeff.“I never see a pair.”

A vague idea was forming in Jean's mind.“How many of these do you get a year?”she asked.

“I turned in eighty-two last year,”the old man said.“'Course that's a little 'un. They mostly run about thirty to thirty-six inch—width of skin, that is. That's a 'gator about eleven foot long.”

Jean said,“Will you sell me this one, Jeff?”

“What do you want it for?”

She laughed.“I want to make myself a pair of shoes out of it.”She paused.“That's if Tim Whelan can make up a pair of lasts for me.”

He looked embarrassed.“I don't want nothing for it,”he said gruffly.“I'll give it to you.”

She argued with him for a little while, and then accepted gracefully.“We'll want a bit of calf skin for the soles,”she said,“and some thicker stuff for building up the heels.”

She fondled the skin in her hands.“It's beautifully soft,”she said,“I'll show you what to do with this.”