双语·像爱丽丝的小镇 Chapter 11

Chapter 11

All that happened nearly three years ago.

I cannot deny that in that time her letters have been a great interest to me, perhaps the greatest interest in my rather barren life. I think that after the affair of Mr Curtis and the poddy dodging she became more closely integrated into the life of the Gulf country than she had been before, because even before her marriage there was a subtle change in her letters. She ceased to write as an Englishwoman living in a strange, hard, foreign land; she gradually began to write about the people as if she was one of them, about the place as if it was her place. That may be merely my fancy, of course, or it may be that I made such a study of her letters, reading and re-reading them and filing them carefully away in a special set of folders that I keep in my flat, that I found subtleties of meaning in them that a more casual reader would not have noticed.

She married Joe Harman in April after the mustering, as she had promised him. They were married by a travelling Church of England priest, one of the Bush Brothers who had been, queerly enough, a curate at St John's in Kingston-on-Thames, not ten miles from where I used to live in Wimbledon. There was, of course, no church in Willstown at that time though one is to be built next year; they were married in the Shire Hall, and all the countryside came to the wedding. They had their honeymoon, or part of it, on Green Island, and I suppose she took her sarong with her, though she did not tell me that.

In the first two years of her married life she made considerable inroads into her capital. She was very good about it; she always started off one thing and got it trading smoothly before starting on another, after the first effort when she started both the ice-cream parlour and the workshop together. She used to send me accounts of her ventures, too, prepared for her by a young man called Len James who worked in the bank. But all the same, she asked me for three or four thousand pounds every six months or so, till by the time her second son was born, the one that she called Noel after me, she had had over eighteen thousand pounds for her various local businesses. Although they all seemed to be making profits Lester and I were growing, by that time, a little concerned about our duty as trustees, broad though our terms of reference under the Macfadden will might be. Our duty was to keep her capital intact and hand it over to her when she was thirty-five, and I began to worry sometimes about the chances of a slump or some unknown disaster in Australia which would extinguish the thirty per cent of her inheritance that we had let her have. Too many eggs seemed to be going into one basket, and her investments, laudable though they might be, could hardly be classed as trustee stocks.

The climax came in February, when she wrote me a long letter from the hospital at Willstown, soon after she had given birth to Noel. She asked me if I would be one of his godfathers, and of course that pleased me very much although there was very little prospect that I should live long enough to discharge my duties by him. Wakeling was to be the second godfather, and as he had married Rose Sawyer about six months previously and seemed to be settled in the district I felt that she would not be injuring her child by giving him an elderly godfather who lived on the other side of the world. I made a corresponding alteration to my will immediately, of course.

She went on in the same letter to discuss affairs at Midhurst.“You know, Joe's only manager at present,”she wrote.“He's done awfully well; there were about eight thousand head of cattle on the place when he went there, but now there are twelve or thirteen thousand. We shall be selling over two thousand head this year, too many to send down to Julia in one herd, so Joe's got to make two trips. It looks as if there'll be a steady increase for the next few years, because each year in the dry Bill Wakeling builds a couple more dams for us so we get more and more feed each year.”

She went on to tell me about Mrs Spears, the owner.“She left the Gulf country after her husband died about ten years ago,”she said,“and now she lives in Brisbane. Joe and I went down and stayed a couple of nights with her last October; I didn't tell you about it then because I wanted to think it over and we had to find out if we could get a loan, too.”

She told me that Mrs Spears was getting very old, and she wanted to realize a part of the considerable capital that she had locked up in Midhurst; probably she wanted to give it away during her lifetime to avoid death duties.“She asked if we could buy a half share in the station,”she said.“She would give us an option to buy the other half at a valuation at the time of her death, whenever that might be. It means finding about thirty thousand pounds; that's about the value of half the stock. The land is rented from the State, of course, and there's seventeen years to go upon the present lease; it means an alteration to the lease to put Joe's name into it jointly with hers.”

She told me that they had been to the bank. The bank would advance two-thirds of the thirty thousand pounds that they would have to find.“They sent an inspector up who knows the cattle business, and he came out to Midhurst,”she wrote.“Joe's got a good name in the Gulf country and I think he thought that we were doing all right with the property. That leaves us with ten thousand pounds to find in cash and that's what I wanted to ask you about.”

She digressed a little.“Midhurst's a good station,”she said,“and we're very happy here. If we can't take it over Mrs Spears will probably sell it, and we'd have to go somewhere else and start again. I'd hate to do that and it would be a great disappointment to Joe after all the work he's put into Midhurst. I'd be miserable leaving Willstown now, because it's turning into quite a fair-sized place, and it's a happy little town to live in, too. I do want to stay here if we can.”

She went on,“I know a cattle station isn't a trustee investment, Noel, any more than any of the other things you've let me put my money into. Will you think it over, and tell me if we can have it? If we can't, I'll have to think again; perhaps I could sell or mortgage some of the businesses I've started since I got here. I should hate to do that, because they might get into bad hands and go downhill. This town's like a young baby—I know something about those, Noel! It needs nursing all the time till it's a bit bigger.”

Another ten thousand pounds, of course, would mean that we should have allowed her to invest half of her inheritance in highly speculative businesses in one district, which was by no means the intention of Mr Macfadden when he made his will. Legally, of course, we were probably safe from any action for a breach of trust by reason of the broad wording of the discretionary clause that I had slipped into the will. I spent a day or two thinking about this before I showed her letter to Lester, and it came to me in the end that our duty was to do what Mr Macfadden would himself have done in similar circumstances.

What would that queer recluse in Ayr have done if he had had to settle this point? He was an invalid, of course, but I did not think he was an unkind or an unreasonable man. He had not made that long trust because he distrusted Jean Paget; he did not even know her. He had made it for her good, because he thought that an unmarried girl in her twenties who was mistress of a large sum of money would be liable to be imposed upon. In that he may well have been right. But Jean Paget was a married woman of thirty with two children now, and married to a sensible and steady sort of man, whatever his ideas on poddy-dodging might be. Would Mr Macfadden, in these circumstances, still have insisted on the trust being maintained in its original form?

I thought not. He was a kindly man—I felt sure of that—and he would have wanted her to have her Midhurst station, since that was where her home and all her present interests were. He was a careful, Scottish man, however; I thought he would have turned his mind more to the details of her investment in Midhurst to ensure that she got good value for this ten thousand pounds. Looking at it from this point of view I was disturbed at the short tenure of the lease. Seventeen years was a short time for Joe Harman to regain the value of the dams that he was building on the property and all the other improvements that he was making; he could not possibly go on with capital improvements until a very much longer lease had been negotiated.

I showed her letter to my partner then, and we had a long talk about it. He took the same view that I did, that the lease was the kernel of the matter.“I can't say that I take a very serious view of this trust, Noel,”he said.“I think your approach is the right one, to try and put yourself in the testator's shoes when looking at this thing. He was quite content to leave the money to his sister without any question of a trust, while her husband was alive to help her. It was only after the husband's death that he wanted the trust. Well, now the daughter's got a husband to help her. If he was disposing of his money now, presumably he wouldn't bother about any trust at all.”

“That's a point,”I said.“I hadn't thought of that one.”

“I don't suggest we disregard the trust,”he said.“I think we ought to use it as a lever to get this lease put right for her. Tell all and sundry that we won't release her money till the leasehold is adjusted to our satisfaction. Then, so far as I'm concerned, she can have all she wants.”

I smiled.“I wouldn't tell her that.”

I sat down next day and drafted a letter to her in reply.“I do not think it is impossible to release a further ten thousand pounds,”I wrote,“but I should be very sorry to do so until this matter of the lease had been adjusted to our satisfaction. As the thing stands at the moment, you could lose your home in seventeen years' time and lose with it all the money that you and Mrs Spears have expended on improvements such as dams and other water conservation schemes, which would pass to the State without any payment whatsoever, so far as my present information goes.”I learned later that that was incorrect.

I came to the main point of my letter next.“No doubt you have a solicitor that you can trust, but if it would assist you I would very gladly come and visit you in Queensland for a few weeks and see this matter of the lease put into satisfactory order before you invest this money in Midhurst. It is many years since I left England and I have regretted that; I cannot expect to have many more years left in which to travel and see the world. I would like to take a long holiday and travel a little before I get too feeble, and if I could help you in this matter of the lease I should be only too glad to come and do so.”I added,“I need hardly say that I should travel at my own expense.”

The answer came in a night letter telegram about ten days later. She urged me to come to them, and suggested that I should come out by air about the end of April, since their winter was approaching then and the weather would be just like an English summer. She said that she was writing with a list of clothes that I should have and medicines and things that I might need upon the journey. I was a little touched by that.

I saw Kennedy, my doctor, at his place in Wimpole Street next day.“Is there any particular reason why I shouldn't fly out to Queensland?”I asked.

He looked at me quizzically.“It's not exactly what I should advise for you, you know. Have you got to go to Queensland?”

“I want to go, very much,”I said.“I want to go and stay out there about a month. There's business I should like to see to personally.”

“How have you been walking recently?”

There was no point in lying to him.“I walk as far as Trafalgar Square most mornings,”I said.“I take a taxi from time.”

“You can't quite manage the whole distance to your office?”

“No,”I said.“I haven't done that for some time.”

“Can you walk upstairs in your club, to the first floor, without stopping?”

I shook my head.“I always go up in the lift. But anyway, there aren't any stairs in Queensland. All the houses are bungalows.”

He smiled.“Take off your coat and your shirt, and let me have a look at you.”

When he had finished his examination, he said,“Well. Are you proposing to go alone?”

I nodded.“I shall be staying with friends at the other end. They'll meet me when I get off the aeroplane.”

“And you really feel it's necessary that you should go?”

I met his eyes.“I want to go, very much indeed.”

“All right,”he said.“You know your condition as well as I do. There's nothing new—only the deterioration that you've got to expect. You put ten years on your age during the war. I think, on the whole, you're wise to travel by air. I think you'd find the Red Sea very trying.”He went on to tell me what I could do and what I mustn't attempt, all the old precautions that he had told me before.

I went back to my office and saw Lester, and told him what I was proposing to do.“I'm going to take about three months holiday,”I said,“starting at the end of April. I'm going out by air, and I don't know quite how long I shall stay for. If I find air travel too tiring on the way out, I may come home by sea.”I paused.“In any case, you'll have to work on the assumption that I shall be away for some considerable time. It's probably about time you started to do that, in any case.”

“You really feel that it is necessary for you to go personally, yourself?”he asked.

“I do.”

“All right, Noel. I only wish you hadn't got to put so much of your energy into this. After all, it's a fairly trivial affair.”

“I can't agree with that,”I said.“I'm beginning to think that this thing is the most important business that I ever handled in my life.”

I left London one Monday morning, and travelled through to Sydney on the same airliner, arriving late on Wednesday night. We stopped for an hour or so at Cairo and Karachi and Calcutta and Singapore and Darwin. I must say the aeroplane was very comfortable and the stewardess was most kind and attentive; it was fatiguing, of course, sleeping two nights in a reclining chair and I was glad when it was over. I stayed two nights in Sydney to rest, and took a little drive around in a hired car during the afternoon. Next day I took the aeroplane to Cairns. It was a lovely flight, especially along the coast of Queensland, after Brisbane. The very last part, up the Hinchinbrook Channel between Cairns and Townsville, must be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.

We landed at Cairns in the evening, and here I had a great surprise, because Joe Harman met me at the aerodrome. The Dakota, he told me, now ran twice a week to the Gulf country, partly on account of the growth of Willstown, and he had come in on the Friday plane to take me out on Monday.“I got one or two little bits of things to order and to see to,”he said.“My solicitor, Ben Hope, he's here in Cairns too. I thought that over the weekend you might like to hear the general set-up of Midhurst, 'n have a talk with him.”

I had not heard the slow Queensland speech since he had come to me in Chancery Lane, over three years before. He took me in a car to the hotel, a queer, rambling building rather beautifully situated, with a huge bar that seemed to be the focal point. We got there just before tea, the evening meal, and went in almost at once and sat down together. He asked me if I would drink tea or beer or plonk.

“Plonk?”I asked.

“Red wine,”he said.“I don't go much for it myself, but jokers who know about wine, they say it's all right.”

They had a wine list, and I chose a Hunter River wine which I must say I found to be quite palatable.“Jean was very sorry she couldn't come and meet you,”he said.“We could have parked Joe with someone, but she's feeding Noel, so that ties her. She's going to drive into Willstown and meet the Dakota on Monday.”

“How is she?”I asked.

“She's fine,”he said.“Having babies seems to suit her. She's looking prettier than ever.”

We settled down after tea on the veranda outside my bedroom, and began discussing the business of Midhurst. He had brought with him copies of the accounts for the station for the last three years, neatly typed and very easily intelligible. I commented upon their form, and he said,“I'm not much of a hand at this sort of thing. Jean did these before she went into the hospital. She does most of the accounts for me. I tell her what I want to do out on the station, and she tells me how much money I've got left to spend. She's got the schooling for the two of us.”

Nevertheless, I found him quite a shrewd man, very well able to appreciate the somewhat intricate points that came up about the lease and his capital improvements. We talked for a couple of hours that night about his station and about the various businesses that Jean had started in the town. He was very interesting about those.

“She's got twenty-two girls working in the workshop,”he said.“Shoes and attaché cases and ladies' bags. That's the one that isn't doing quite so well as the others.”He turned the pages of the accounts to show me.“It's making a profit now, but last year there was a loss of over two hundred pounds—two hundred and twenty-seven. But all the others—oh my word.”He showed me the figures for the ice-cream parlour, the beauty parlour, the swimming-pool, the cinema, the laundry, and the dress shop.“They're doing fine. The fruit and vegetable shop, that's all right, too.”We totted up the figures and found that the seven of them together had made a clear profit of two thousand six hundred and seventy-three pounds in the previous year.“It'ld pay her to run the workshop at a loss,”he said.“She gets it back out of what the girls spend to make themselves look pretty for the ringers, and what the ringers spend in taking out the girls.”

I was a little troubled about the workshop.“Can she expand it?”I asked.“Can she lower the overhead by doing a bigger business?”

He was doubtful about that.“She's using just about all the alligator skins Jeff Pocock and two others can bring in,”he said.“Wallabies, they're getting scarcer than they were, too. I don't think she can get much bigger in the workshop. She doesn't want to, either. She's got a kind of hunch that in a few years' time the workshop won't be necessary at all, that the town will be so big that a workshop employing twenty girls won't be neither here nor there.”

“I see,”I said thoughtfully.“How big is the town now?”

“There's about four hundred and fifty people living in Willstown,”he said.“That's not counting boongs, and not counting people living out upon the stations. The population's trebled in the last three years.”

“Is that just because of the workshop?”I asked.

He said slowly,“I think it must be—everything comes back to that, when you look at it. It's not only the workshop, you see. She's got two girls employed in the ice-cream parlour, and one lubra. Two in the beauty parlour, three in the dress shop, two in the fruit shop, three in the cinema. She employs quite a lot of people.”

I was puzzled.“But can twenty girls in the workshop provide work for all these other girls?”I asked.

“It doesn't seem to work that way,”he said.“We were totting it up the other day. She's never employed more than about thirty-five girls at any one time, but since she started there's been forty-two girls married out of her businesses. They mostly marry ringers. Well, that's forty-two families starting, forty-two women wanting cinema and beauty parlour and fresh vegetables and that, besides the thirty-five girls that she's still got employed. It kind of snowballs.”He paused.“Take the bank. There's two girl clerks there that there never were before, because of the bigger business. The AMP have started up an office, and there's a girl in that. Bill Wakeling's got a girl in his office.”He turned to me.“It's a fact, there's something like a hundred girls and married women under twenty-five in Willstown now,”he said.“When Jean came, there was two.”

“And the babies!”he said.“There's more babies than you could shake a stick at. They've had to send a special maternity nurse to the hospital. That's another girl. She got engaged to Phil Duncan, the copper, last month, so there'll be another one.”

I smiled.“Are there enough men to go round?”

“Oh my word,”he said.“There's no difficulty in getting men to work in Willstown. I've had ringers coming from all over Queensland, from the Northern Territory, too, wanting a job round about Willstown. There was one chap came all the way from Marble Bar in Western Australia, two thousand miles or so. The labour situation's very different now from what it was three years ago.”

I went to bed early that night with plenty to think about. We had a conference next morning with Mr Hope, the solicitor, in his office, and wrote a letter to the Queensland Land Administration Board suggesting a meeting to discuss the lease of Midhurst. That afternoon we spent in driving around Cairns to see the sights; it seemed to me to be a pleasant little tropical town, beautifully situated. On Sunday we drove up on to the Atherton Tableland, high rolling downs farmed somewhat on the English style.

We flew to Willstown on Monday morning, in a Dakota. We landed at places called Georgetown and Croydon on the way and stayed on each aerodrome for about twenty minutes, picking up and setting down passengers and freight, as we circled Georgetown for the landing I was able to study the place. It was pathetic in a way, for you could see from the air the rectangular pattern of wide streets that once had been busy and lined with houses, now rutted with the rain and grass-grown. A few scattered houses stood at the intersections of what had once been these streets, and they were clustered rather more thickly around the hotel, the only two-storeyed building in either place. Both of these were derelict gold towns.

The people who came to meet the aeroplane in trucks were bronzed, healthy, and humorous; the men were mostly great big tanned, competent people; the women candid, uncomplaining housewives.

I sat at the window studying Croydon as we took off, till it fell away from view behind us.“I'm kind of glad that you've seen those,”said Joe beside me.“Willstown was like that, only a bit worse. It's no great shakes yet, of course, but it's better than Croydon, oh my word it is.”

We circled Willstown as we came in to land. It stood by quite a large river, and it was queerly like the other two towns in its layout. There were the same wide streets arranged in rectangular pattern, but the pattern was filling up with houses here. From the air the glint of the sun upon new corrugated iron roofs was everywhere, so that at one point as we circled opposite the sun I had to shut my eyes against the dazzle. All these houses seemed to be new, and a considerable number were still in the process of building. In the main street opposite the two-storeyed building that I guessed to be the hotel, a line of shrubs had been planted in a formal garden down the middle of the road, transforming the wide cattle-rack into two carriageways, and tarmac pavements had been made in this part of the town. Opposite the hotel I could see the swimming-pool with diving- boards and cabins and a lawn beside it, just as Jean had described it to me in her letters. Then the town was lost to view, and we were landing, coming in over a brand-new racetrack.

She was there to meet me in her Ford utility, her own car that she had bought for running in and out of town to see to her businesses. She was more mature now than I had remembered her; she had grown into a very lovely woman. She said,“Oh Noel, it is nice to see you. Are you very tired?”

“I'm not tired,”I said.“Three or four years older, perhaps. You're looking very well.”

“I am well,”she said.“Disgustingly well. Noel, it was good of you to offer to come out like this. I wanted to ask you to, and then it seemed too much to ask. It's such a very long way. Come and sit in the utility. Joe's just getting your bags.”

They drove me out immediately to Midhurst. We passed through the main street of Willstown and I wanted to stop and see what she had done, but they would not let me.“Time enough for that tomorrow or the next day,”she said.“We'll go to Midhurst now, and you can rest a bit.”

I knew the sort of scenery that I should see upon the way to Midhurst from many readings of her letters, and it was just as I had expected it to be. There was no road in the usually accepted sense; she picked her way across country in the car following the general line of the tracks but avoiding the deep holes. When we came to the first creek, however, I was interested to see that they had made a sort of concrete bottom or causeway across the river bed, and this causeway was marked by two massive wooden posts upon the bank at either end.“We haven't got as far as having bridges yet,”she said.“But this thing is a god-send in the wet, to know that you won't hit a boulder under water.”

The homestead was very much as I had expected it to be, but there was a garden now in front of it, bright with flowers, and there were great ranges of log stockades or cattle pens that I had not heard about.“They've gone up in the last two years,”Joe said.“We've got three Zebu bulls now, and you want more stockyards when you start breeding.”His Zebu bulls were a cross between Indian cattle and English Herefords. He told me that he was keeping a small herd of dairy cows, too, and that meant more enclosures still.

“How many hands have you got now?”I asked.

“Eleven white stockmen,”he said,“and ten boongs. It's almost easier to get white than black in this part of the country.”

They would not let me walk that day, but put me in a long chair in the veranda with a cool drink, and I sat watching all the work of the station as it went on in the yard below. It was fascinating to sit there and watch it all, the white stockmen and the black stockmen, the cattle, the dogs, and the horses, and a half grown wallaby lolloping about with puppies teasing it by playing with its tail. I could have sat there indefinitely watching it all, and watching the grace of Jean moving round the house attending to her children and her Abo women. I did sit there for three days.

She took me into town one morning, and showed me everything that she had done. She took me to the workshop first, and she made me put a scarf on before we went in because it would be cold. It was not cold as we would know cold, but it struck chilly after the warm day outside, because she kept the air-conditioner going all the year round.“The girls do love it so,”she said.“There's always more of them wanting to work here than I can take on, just because of that.”They all looked very smart and pretty in their green smocks, working at the leather goods. There was a long mirror at the end of the shop, and a few pictures of hair styles and frocks cut out of illustrated magazines pinned up on the wall.“We change those every so often,”she said.“I like them to make the best of themselves.”

The workshop stood by itself, but she had arranged her other enterprises all in a row as a little street of shops. She had built a wooden veranda over the broad tarmac pavement to shade shopgazers from the sun or the rain. Here she had the beauty parlour with an Estonian in charge, a dark, handsome middle-aged woman, beautifully got up, with two Australian girls under her. There were four private little booths, and a glass counter and display-case full of women's things; it was all very clean and nice. Next in the row came a little shop with a battery of four Home Laundries, and three young married women sitting gossiping while they waited for their wash. Next was the greengrocer's shop, which sold seeds and garden implements as well as fruit and vegetables, and after that the dress shop. This was quite a big place, with counters and dummys clothed in summer frocks, and I was interested to see a small, secluded part served by a middle-aged woman where the elderly could buy the clothes they were accustomed to, black skirts and flannel petticoats and coarse kitchen aprons.

She took me across the road and showed me the cinema and the swimming-pool. It was quite a hot day and by that time I had had about enough, so she took me to the ice-cream parlour and we had a cool drink there. She had some business to attend to and she left me there for half an hour, and I sat watching the people as they came into the parlour, or as they passed on the sidewalk. There were far more women than men. All of them seemed to be pretty, and at least half of them seemed to be in the family way.

She came back presently, and sat with me in the parlour.“What comes next?”I asked.“Is there any end to this?”

She laughed and touched my hand.“No end,”she said.“I keep on badgering you for more money, don't I? As a matter of fact, I think I can start the next one out of the profits.”

“What's that one going to be?”

“A self-service grocer's shop,”she replied.“The demand's shifting, Noel. When we started, it was entertainment that was needed, because everyone was young and nobody was married then. The solid, sensible things weren't wanted. What they needed then was ice-cream, and the swimming-pool, and the beauty parlour, and the cinema. They'll still need those things, but they won't expand so much more. What the town needs now is things for the young family. A really good grocer's shop selling good, varied food as cheap as we can possibly get it. And then, as soon as I can start it, we must have a household store. Do you know, you can't even buy a baby's pot in Willstown?”

I nodded at the store opposite.“Doesn't Mr Duncan sell those?”

“He's got no imagination. He only sells big ones, that'ld hold the whole baby.”

I asked her presently,“How do all your goods get here? They aren't all flown, surely?”

She shook her head.“They come by train from Cairns to Forsayth, and by truck from there. There's no proper road, of course. It makes it terribly expensive, because a truck is worn out in about two years. Bill Wakeling says the Roads Commission are considering a road from here to Mareeba and Cairns—a proper tarmac road. Of course, he wants to build it. He thinks we'll get it inside two years, because the town's growing so fast. I must say, it'll be a god-send when we do. Fancy being able to drive to Cairns in a day!”

The Land Administration Board answered our letter later on that week and suggested a meeting on the following Tuesday or Wednesday, which suited our air services. I flew down to Brisbane with Joe Harman, picking up his solicitor in Cairns, and we had a conference with the Land Administration Board, which lasted most of one day, settling the Heads of Agreement. Then Harman went back to his station and Mr Hope and I stayed on in Brisbane passing the draft of the final agreement backwards and forwards to the Land Administration Board with amendments in red and green and blue and purple ink. On top of this, I was in communication with the solicitors for Mrs Spears over the option agreement for the final purchase of Midhurst; all this kept me busy in Brisbane for nearly a fortnight. Finally I was able to agree to them both, after an exchange of cables with Lester, and brought them back to Cairns. Joe Harman signed them, and we put them in the post, and my business in Queensland was done.

I went back to Willstown with Joe and stayed another week with them, not because there was any reason why I should do so, but for an old man's sentiment. I sat on the veranda with Jean, studying her drawing of the layout of the self-service grocery. We discussed whether it could not be combined with the hardware store. We went into Willstown and visited the site for it, and I spent some time with Mr Carter, the Shire Clerk, discussing with him the position in regard to the leases that she held for land. She showed me the swimming-pool and we talked about the cost of tiling over the rough concrete to make it look better, and I sat for hours in the ice-cream parlour watching those beautiful young women as they pushed their prams from shop to shop.

I asked her once if she would be coming back to England for a holiday. She hesitated, and then said gently,“Not for a bit, Noel. Joe and I want to take a holiday next year, but we've been planning to go to America. We thought we'd go to San Francisco and get an old car, and drive down the west coast into Arizona and Texas. I'm sure we'd learn an awful lot that would be useful here if we did that. Their problems must be just the same as ours, and they've been at it longer.”

Jean touched me very much one evening by suggesting that I stayed out there and made my home with them.“You've nothing to go back to England for, Noel,”she said.“You're practically retired now. Why not give up Chancery Lane, give up London, and stay here with us? You know we'd love to have you.”

It was impossible, of course; the old have their place and the young have theirs.“That's very kind of you,”I said.“I wish I could. But I've got sons, and grandchildren, you know. Harry will be coming home next year and we're all hoping that he'll get a shore appointment. He's due for a term of duty at the Admiralty, I think.”

She said,“I'm sorry, for our sake. Joe and I talked this over, and we hoped we'd be able to get you to stay with us for a long time. Make your home here with us.”

I said quietly,“That was a very kind thought, Jean, but I must go back.”

They drove me to the aeroplane, of course, to see me off. Leave-takings are stupid things, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible. I cannot even remember what she said, and it is not important anyway. I can only remember a great thankfulness that the Dakota on that service didn't carry a stewardess so that nobody could see my face as we circled after taking off to get on course, and I saw the new buildings and bright roofs of that Gulf town for the last time.

It is winter now, and it is nearly three months since I have been able to get out to the office or the club. My daughter-in-law Eve, Martin's wife, has been organizing me; it was she who insisted that I should engage this nurse to sleep in the flat. They wanted me to go into some sort of nursing- home, but I won't do that.

I have spent the winter writing down this story, I suppose because an old man loves to dwell upon the past and this is my own form of the foible. And having finished it, it seems to me that I have been mixed up in things far greater than I realized at the time. It is no small matter to assist in the birth of a new city, and as I sit here looking out into the London mists I sometimes wonder just what it is that Jean has done; if any of us realize, even yet, the importance of her achievement.

I wrote to her the other day and told her a queer thought that came into my head. Her money came originally from the goldfields of Hall's Creek in West Australia, where James Macfadden made it in the last years of the last century. I suppose Hall's Creek is derelict now, and like another Burketown or another Croydon. I think it is fitting that the gold that has been taken from those places should come back to them again in capital to make them prosperous. When I thought of that, it seemed to me that I had done the right thing with her money and that James Macfadden would have approved, although I had run contrary to the strict intentions of his son's will. After all, it was James who made the money and took it away to England from a place like Willstown. I think he would have liked it when his great-niece took it back again.

I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection.