A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  Jean stared across the river at the rubber trees and coconut palms. ‘I suppose so. As a matter of fact, I’ve got an address of a sort. He used to work before the war on a cattle station called Wollara, near a place called Alice Springs. He said that they were keeping his job open for him there.’

  ‘If you’ve got that address,’ he observed, ‘I should write there. You’re much more likely to find him that way than by writing to Canberra.’

  ‘I might do that,’ she said slowly. ‘I would like to see him again. You see, it was because of us that it all happened …’

  It had been her intention to go back to Singapore and wait there for a boat to England; if she had to wait long for a cheap passage she intended to try and find a job for a few weeks or months. Malayan Airways called at Kota Bahru next day, and the Dakota landed at Kuantan on the way down to Singapore. She spoke to Wilson-Hays again that evening after dinner.

  ‘Do you think there would be a hotel or anything at Kuantan if I stopped there for a day?’ she asked.

  He looked at her kindly. ‘Do you want to go back there?’ he asked.

  ‘I think I do,’ she said. ‘I’d like to go and see the people at the hospital and find out what I can.’

  He said, ‘You’d better stay with David and Joyce Bowen. Bowen is the District Commissioner; he’d be glad to put you up.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance to people,’ she said. ‘Isn’t there a resthouse that I could stay in? After all, I know this country fairly well.’

  ‘That’s why Bowen would like to meet you,’ he remarked. ‘You must realize that you’re quite a well-known person in these parts. He would be very disappointed if you stayed at the resthouse.’

  She looked at him in wonder. ‘Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done.’

  ‘That’s as it may be,’ he replied. ‘The fact is, that you did it.’

  She flew on down to Kuantan next day. Someone must have told the crew of the aircraft about her, because the Malay stewardess came to her after half an hour and said, ‘We’re just coming up to Kuala Telang, Miss Paget. Captain Philby wants to know if you would care to come forward to the cockpit and see it.’ So she went forward through the door and stood between the pilots; they brought the Dakota down to about seven hundred feet and circled the village; she could see the well and the new atap roof of the washhouse, and she could see people standing gazing up at the machine. Fatimah and Zubeidah and Mat Amin. Then they straightened up and flew on down the coast, and Kuala Telang was left behind.

  The Bowens met her at the airstrip, which is ten miles from the town of Kuantan; Wilson-Hays had sent them a signal that morning. They were a friendly, unsophisticated couple, and she had no difficulty in telling them a little about the Australian soldier who had been tortured when they were sitting in the DCs house, where Captain Sugamo had sat so often, over a cup of tea. They said that Sister Frost was now in charge of the hospital, but it was doubtful if there was anybody now upon the staff who was there in 1942. They drove down after tea to see Sister Frost.

  She received them in the matron’s room, very hygienic and smelling strongly of disinfectant. She was an Englishwoman about forty years of age. ‘There’s nobody here now who was on the staff then,’ she said. ‘Nurses in a place like this – they’re always leaving to get married. We never seem to keep them longer than about two years. I don’t know what to suggest.’

  Bowen said, ‘What about Phyllis Williams? She was a nurse here, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, her,’ the sister said disparagingly. ‘She was here for the first part of the war until she married that man. She might know something about it.’

  They left the hospital, and as they drove to find Phyllis Wilhams Mrs Bowen enlightened Jean. ‘She’s a Eurasian,’ she said. ‘Very dark, almost as dark as a Malay. She married a Chinese, a man called Bun Tai Lin who runs the cinema. What you’d call a mixed marriage, but they seem to get along all right. She’s a Roman Catholic, of course.’ Jean never fathomed the ‘of course’.

  The Bun Tai Lins lived in a rickety wooden house up the hill overlooking the harbour. They could not get the car to the house, but left it in the road and walked up a short lane littered with garbage. They found Phyllis Williams at home, a merry-faced, brown woman with four children around her and evidently about to produce a fifth. She was glad to see them and took them into a shabby room, the chief decorations of which were a set of pewter beer-mugs and a large oleograph of the King and Queen in coronation robes.

  She spoke very good English. ‘Oh yes, I remember that poor boy,’ she said. ‘Joe Harman, that was his name. I nursed him for three or four months – he was in a state when he came in. We none of us thought he’d live. But he got over it. He must have led a very healthy life, because his flesh healed wonderfully. He said that he was like a dog, he healed so well.’

  She turned to Jean. ‘Are you the lady that was leading the party of women and children from Panong?’ she asked. ‘I thought you must be. Fancy you coming here again! You know, he was always wanting to know about you and your party, if anybody knew the way you’d gone. And of course, we didn’t know, and with that Captain Sugamo in the mood he was nobody was going to go round asking questions to find out.’

  She turned to Jean. ‘I forget your name?’

  ‘Paget. Jean Paget.’

  The Eurasian looked puzzled. ‘That wasn’t it. I wonder now, was he talking about someone different? I can’t remember now what he called her, but it wasn’t that. I thought it would have been you.’

  ‘Mrs Frith?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll remember presently.’

  She could not tell them very much more than Jean knew already. The Australian had been sent down to a prison camp in Singapore as soon as he was fit to travel; they heard no more of him. They thought that he would make a good recovery in the end, though it would be years before the muscles of his back got back their strength if, indeed, they ever would. She knew no more than that.

  They left presently, and went down the garbage-strewn lane towards the car. When they were nearly at the bottom the woman called to them from the veranda. ‘I just remembered that name. Mrs Boong. That’s who he was always talking about, Mrs Boong. Was that one of your party?’

  Jean laughed, and called back to her, ‘That’s what he used to call me!’

  The woman was satisfied. ‘I thought it must have been you that he was always talking about.’

  On the way back to the DCs house in the car, they passed the recreation ground. There were tennis nets rigged and one or two couples playing; there was a white young man playing a brown girl. The tree still stood overlooking the courts, and underneath it a couple of Malay women sat exactly where the feet of the tortured man had hung, on ground that had been soaked in blood, and gossiped while their children played around. It all looked very peaceful in the evening light.

  Jean spent that night with the Bowens, and went on to Singapore next day in the Dakota. Wilson-Hays had advised her about hotels, and she stayed at the Adelphi opposite the Cathedral.

  She wrote to me from there a couple of days later. It was a long letter, about eight pages long, written in ink smudged a little with the sweat that had formed on her hand as she wrote in that humid place. First she told me what had happened in Kuala Telang; she told me about the well-diggers and that Joe Harman was still alive. And then she went on,

  I’ve been puzzling over what I could do to get in touch with him again. You see, it was all because of us that it happened. He stole the chickens for us, and he must have known the sort of man that Captain Sugamo was, and the risk that he was taking. I must find out where he is living now, and if he’s all right; I can’t believe that he can be able to work as a stockrider after having been so terribly injured. I think he was a man who’d always fall upon his feet somehow or other if he was well enough, but I can’t bear the thought that he might be still in hospital, perhaps, and likely to stay there for ever wi
th his injuries.

  I did think of writing to him at this place Wollara that he told me about, the cattle station that he worked on, somewhere near Alice Springs. But thinking it over, if he can’t work he can’t be there, and I don’t suppose I’d ever get an answer to a letter from a place like that, or not for ages, anyway. I thought of writing to Canberra to try and find out something, but that’s almost as bad. And this brings me to what I wanted to tell you when I started this letter, Noel, and I hope it won’t be too much of a shock. I’m going on to Australia from here.

  Don’t think me absolutely crazy for doing this. The fare from here to Darwin costs sixty pounds by the Constellation, and you can get a bus from Darwin to Alice Springs; it takes two or three days but it ought to be much cheaper than flying. After paying the hotel bill here I shall still have about a hundred and seven pounds, not counting next month’s money. I thought I’d go to Alice Springs and get to this place Wollara and find out about him there; someone in that district is bound to know what happened to him, and where he is now.

  There are some merchant service officers staying here, very nice young men, and they tell me I can get a cabin on a merchant ship back to England probably from Townsville, that’s on the east coast of Australia in Queensland, and if there isn’t a ship there I’d certainly get one at Brisbane. I’ve been talking to a man in the Chartered Bank here in Raffles Place who is very helpful, and I’ve arranged with him to transfer my next month’s money to the Bank of New South Wales in Alice Springs, and so I’ll have money to get me across to Townsville or Brisbane. Write to me care of the Bank of New South Wales in Alice Springs, because I know I’m going to feel a long way from home when I get there.

  I’m leaving here on Thursday by the Constellation, so I’ll be in Australia somewhere by the time you get this letter. I have a feeling that I’m being a terrible nuisance to you, Noel, but I’ll have an awful lot to tell you when I get back home. I don’t think the trip home from Townsville or Brisbane can take longer than three months at the outside, so I shall be home in England in time for Christmas at the very latest.

  I sat there reading and re-reading this, bitterly disappointed. I had been making plans for entertainments for her when she came back, I suppose – in fact, I know I had been. Old men who lead a somewhat empty life get rather stupid over things like that. Lester Robinson came into my office with a sheaf of papers in his hand as I was reading her letter for the third time; I laid the letter down. ‘My Paget girl,’ I said. ‘You know – that Macfadden estate that we’re trustees for. She’s not coming home after all. She’s gone on from Malaya to Australia.’

  He glanced at me, and I suppose the disappointment that I felt showed in my face, because he said gently, ‘I told you she was old enough to make a packet of trouble for us.’ I looked up at him quickly to see what he meant by that, but he began talking about an unadopted road in Colchester, and the moment passed.

  I went on with my work, but the black mood persisted and it was with me when I reached the club that night. I settled down after dinner in the library with a volume of Horace because I thought the mental exercise required to read the Latin would take my mind off things and put me in a better frame of mind. But I had forgotten my Horace, I suppose, because a phrase I had not read or thought about for forty years suddenly stared up at me from the page and brought me up with a round turn,

  – Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, Dulce loquentem.

  It had been a part of my youth, that phrase, as I suppose it is a part of the youth of many young men who have been in love. I could not bear to go on reading Horace after that, and I sat thinking of sweetly smiling, soft-spoken Lalage on her way to Alice Springs in a long-distance bus, until I broke away from morbid fancies and got up and put the book back on the shelf.

  It must have been about a week after that that Derek Harris came into my room as the client went out. Derek is one of our two articled clerks, and one day I expect to make him a partner; a pleasant fresh-faced lad. He said, ‘Could you spare a few minutes for a stranger, sir?’

  ‘What sort of stranger?’ I inquired.

  He said, ‘A man called Harman. He came about an hour ago without any appointment and asked to see you. Sergeant Gunning asked if I would see him as you were engaged, and I had a talk with him, but it’s you that he wants to see. I understand that it’s something to do with Miss Paget.’

  I knew now where I had heard that name before, but it was quite incredible. I asked, ‘What sort of a man is he?’

  He grinned broadly. ‘Some sort of a colonial, I should think. Probably Australian. He’s an outdoor type, anyway.’

  ‘Is he a reasonable person?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, sir. He’s some sort of a countryman, I should say.’

  It was all beginning to fit in, and yet it was incredible that an Australian stockman should have found his way to my office in Chancery Lane. ‘Is his name Joseph, by any chance?’ I asked.

  ‘You know him, do you, sir? Joe Harman. Shall I ask him to come up?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll see him now.’ Harris went down to fetch him, and I stood by my window looking out into the grey street, wondering what this visit meant and how it had come about, and how much of my client’s business could I tell this man.

  Harris showed him in, and I turned from the window to meet him.

  He was a fair-haired man, about five feet ten in height. He was thickset but not fat; I judged him to be between thirty and thirty-five years old. His face was deeply tanned but his skin was clear; he had very bright blue eyes. He was not a handsome man; his face was too square and positive for that, but it was a simple and good natured face. He walked towards me with a curious stiff gait.

  I shook hands with him. ‘Mr Harman?’ I said. ‘My name is Strachan. Do you want to see me?’ And as I spoke I was unable to resist the temptation to look down at his hand. There was a huge scar on the back of it.

  He said a little awkwardly, ‘I don’t want to keep you long.’ He was ill at ease and obviously embarrassed.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Sit down, Mr Harman, and tell me what I can do for you.’ I put him in the client’s chair before my desk and gave him a cigarette. He pulled from his pocket a tin box of wax matches of a style that was strange to me, and cracked one expertly with his thumbnail without burning himself. He was wearing a very ready-made suit, quite new, and an unusually ornamental tie for London wear.

  ‘I was wondering if you could tell me about Miss Jean Paget,’ he said. ‘Where she lives, or anything like that.’

  I smiled. ‘Miss Paget is a client of mine, Mr Harman,’ I said. ‘You evidently know that. But a client’s business is entirely confidential, you know. Are you a friend of hers?’

  The question seemed to embarrass him still further. ‘Sort of,’ he replied. ‘We met once in the war, in Malaya that was. I’ll have to tell you who I am, of course. I’m a Queenslander. I run a station in the Gulf country, about twenty miles from Willstown.’ He spoke very slowly and deliberately, not from embarrassment but because that seemed to be his way. ‘I mean the homestead is twenty miles from the town, but one limb of the land runs down the creek to within five miles. Midhurst, that’s the name of my station. Midhurst, Willstown, is the address.’

  I made a note upon my pad, and smiled at him again. ‘You’re a long way from home, Mr Harman,’ I said.

  ‘Too right,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know nobody in England except Miss Paget and a cobber I met in the prison camp who lives at a place called Gateshead in the north of England. I came here for a holiday, you might say, and I thought perhaps Miss Paget might be glad to know that I’m in England, but I don’t know her address.’

  ‘Rather a long way to come for a holiday?’ I observed.

  He smiled a little sheepishly. ‘I struck it lucky. I won the Casket.’

  ‘The Casket?’

  ‘The Golden Casket. Don’t you have that here?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard
of it.’

  ‘Oh my word,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t get along without the Casket in Queensland. It’s the State lottery that gets the money to build hospitals.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Did you win a prize in the lottery?’

  ‘Oh my word,’ he repeated. ‘Did I win a prize. I won a thousand pounds – not English pounds, of course, Australian pounds, but it’s a thousand pounds to us. I always take a ticket in every Casket like everybody else because if you don’t get a prize you get a hospital and there’s times when that’s more useful. You ought to see the hospital the Casket built at Willstown. Three wards it’s got, with two beds in each, and two rooms for the sisters, and a separate house for the doctor only we can’t get a doctor to come yet because Willstown’s a bit isolated, you see. We’ve got an X-ray apparatus there and a wireless so that the sister can call for the Cairns Ambulance – the aeroplane, you know. We couldn’t do without the Casket.’

  I must say I was a little bit interested. ‘Does the Casket pay for the aeroplane, too?’

  He shook his head. ‘You pay seven pounds ten a year to the Cairns Ambulance, each family, that is. Then if you get sick and have to go to Cairns the sister calls Cairns on the wireless and the aeroplane comes out to take you into Cairns to hospital. That’s free, provided that you pay the seven pounds ten each year.’

  ‘How far are you from Cairns?’

  ‘About three hundred miles.’

  I reverted to the business in hand. ‘Tell me, Mr Harman,’ I said, ‘how did you get to know that I was Miss Paget’s solicitor?’

  ‘She told me in Malaya when we met, she lived in Southampton,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know any address, so I went there and stayed in a hotel, because I thought maybe she’d like to know I was in England. I never saw a city that had been bombed before – oh my word. Well, then I looked in the telephone book and asked a lot of people but I couldn’t find out nothing except she had an aunt that lived in Wales at a place called Colwyn Bay. So then I went to Colwyn Bay.’