by Nevil Shute
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 gold mines 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 how.”
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 visualise 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 good-night. 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 conservation 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 wash-tub, 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, scrutinising 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 schoolteacher. 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 deck-chair, 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 farther 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, barn-like 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 Fetcher 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 round 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 tea-time 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, “Good-night, 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.