A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t hinder me riding, thank the Lord, but I can’t lift heavy weights. They told me in the hospital I won’t ever be able to lift heavy weights again, and I’d better not try.’

  She nodded, and took one of his hands in hers. He stood beside her while she turned it over in her own, and looked at the great scars upon the palm and on the back. ‘What about these, Joe?’

  ‘They’re all right,’ he said. ‘I can grip anything – start up a truck, or anything.’

  She turned to the table. ‘Have a beer.’ She handed him a glass. ‘You must be thirsty. Three of these are for you.’

  ‘Good-oh.’ He took a glass and sank half of it. They sat down together in the deckchairs. ‘Tell me what happened to you,’ he asked. ‘I know you said not to talk about Malaya. It was a fair cow, that place. I don’t want to remember about it any more. But I do want to know what happened to you – after Kuantan.’

  She sipped her beer. ‘We went on,’ she said. ‘Captain Sugamo sent us on the same day, after – after that. We went on up the east coast with just the sergeant in charge of us. I was sorry for the sergeant, Joe, because he was very much in disgrace, because of what happened. He never got over it, and then he got fever and gave up. He died at a place called Kuala Telang, about half way between Kuantan and Kota Bahru. That was about a month later.’

  ‘He was the only Nip guarding you?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Well, what did you do then?’

  She raised her head. ‘They let us stay there all the war,’ she said. ‘We just lived in the village, working in the paddy fields till the war was over.’

  ‘You mean, paddling about in the water, planting the rice, like the Malays?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my word,’ he breathed.

  She said, ‘It wasn’t a bad life. I’d rather have been there than in a camp, I think – once we got settled down. We were all fairly healthy when the war ended, and we were able to make a little school and teach the children something. We taught some of the Malay children, too.’

  ‘I did hear a bit about that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I heard from a pilot on the airline, down at Julia Creek.’

  She stared at him. ‘How did he know about us?’

  ‘He was the pilot of the aeroplane that flew you out, in 1945,’ he replied. ‘He said that you got taken in trucks to Kota Bahru. He flew you from Kota Bahru to Singapore. He’s working for TAA now, on the route from Townsville to Mount Isa. That goes through Julia Creek. I met him there this last May, when I was down there putting stock onto the train.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said slowly. ‘It was an Australian Dakota that flew us out. Was he a thin, fair-haired boy?’

  ‘That’ld be the one.’

  She thought for a minute. ‘What did he tell you, Joe?’

  ‘Just what I said. He said he’d flown you down to Singapore.’

  ‘What did he tell you about me?’ She looked at him, and there was laughter in her eyes.

  He grinned sheepishly, and said nothing.

  ‘Come on, Joe,’ she said. ‘Have another beer, and let’s get this straight.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. He took a glass and held it in his hand, but did not drink. ‘He said you were a single woman, Mrs Boong. I always thought the lot of you was married.’

  ‘They all were, except me. Is that why you went rushing off to England?’

  He met her eyes. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Oh, Joe! What a waste of money, when here we are in Cairns!’

  He laughed with her, and took a long drink of beer. ‘Well, how was I to know that you’d be turning up in Cairns?’ He thought for a minute. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t told me that.’

  She was embarrassed in her turn. ‘I came into some money,’ she said. ‘I think Noel Strachan told you about that.’ ‘That’s right,’ he said kindly.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do with myself then,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to go on working as a typist in a London suburb any more. And then I got the idea into my head that I wanted to do something for the village where we lived for those three years, Kuala Telang. I wanted to give them a well.’

  ‘A well?’ he asked.

  Sitting there with a glass of beer in her hand she told him about Kuala Telang, and about her friends there, and the washhouse, and the well. Then she came to the difficult bit. ‘The well-diggers came from Kuantan,’ she said. ‘I thought that you were dead, Joe. We all did.’

  He grinned. ‘I bloody nearly was.’

  ‘The well-diggers told me that you weren’t,’ she said. They told me that you’d been put into the hospital, and you’d recovered.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I tried to find out what had happened to you, but they didn’t know, or if they knew they wouldn’t say. I reckon they were all scared stiff of that Sugamo.’

  She nodded. ‘I went to Kuantan. It’s very peaceful there now. People playing tennis on the tennis courts, and sitting gossiping under that ghastly tree. They told me at the hospital that you’d asked about us.’ She smiled. ‘Mrs Boong.’

  He grinned. ‘But did you come on to Australia from there?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well,’ she said awkwardly, ‘I wanted to see if you were all right. I thought perhaps you might be still in hospital or something.’

  ‘Is that dinky-die?’ he asked. ‘You came on to Australia because of me?’

  ‘In a way,’ she said. ‘Don’t let it put ideas into your head.’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll have done the same if you’d have been an Abo.’

  ‘Well, you’re a fine one to talk about me wasting money,’ he said. ‘We’d have met all right if you’d have stayed in England.’

  She said indignantly, ‘Well, how was I to know that you’d be turning up in England, and as fit as a flea?’

  They sat drinking their beer for some time. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked. ‘Where did you come to first?’

  She said, ‘I knew you used to work at Wollara and I thought they’d know about you there. So I flew from Singapore to Darwin, and went down to Alice on the bus.’

  ‘Oh my word. You went to Alice Springs? Did you go out to Wollara and see Tommy Duveen?’

  She shook her head. ‘I stayed about a week in Alice, and I got your address at Midhurst from Mr Duveen over the radio, from the hospital. So then I flew up to Willstown – I sent you a wire at Midhurst to say I was coming. But they told me there, of course, that you were in England.’

  He stared at her. ‘Is that dinky-die? You’ve been to Willstown?’

  She nodded. ‘I was there three weeks.’

  ‘Three weeks!’ He stared at her. ‘Where did you stay?’

  ‘With Mrs Connor, in the hotel.’

  ‘But why three weeks? Three hours would have been enough for most people.’

  ‘I had to stay somewhere,’ she said. ‘If you go running off to England, people who want to see you have to hang around. You’ll probably find the Australian Hotel’s full of them when you get back.’

  He grinned, ‘My word, I will. What did you do all the time?’

  ‘Sat around and talked to Al Burns and Pete Fletcher and Sam Small, and all the rest.’

  ‘You must have created a riot.’ He paused, thinking deeply about this new aspect of the matter. ‘Did you go out to Midhurst?’

  She shook her head. ‘I stayed in Willstown all the time. I met Jim Lennon, though.’

  The bell rang downstairs for tea. ‘We’d better go down, Joe,’ she said. ‘They don’t like it if you’re late.’

  ‘I know.’ He picked up his glass to drain it, but sat with it in his hand, untouched. At last he said, ‘What did you think of Willstown, Miss Paget?’

  She smiled. ‘Look, Joe, forget about Miss Paget. You can call me Mrs Boong or you can call me Jean, but if you go on with Miss
Paget I’ll go home tomorrow.’

  He smiled slightly. ‘All right, Mrs Boong. What did you think of Willstown?’

  ‘We’ll be late for tea, Joe, if we start on that.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  She smiled at him with her eyes. ‘I thought it was an awful place, Joe,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t see how anyone can bear to live there.’ She laid her hand upon his arm. ‘I want to talk to you about it, but we must go and have tea now.’

  He got up from his chair, and set the glass down. ‘Too right,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s a crook kind of a place for a woman.’

  They went down to tea and sat at a table together, Joe deep in gloom. When they had ordered, Jean said, ‘Joe, how long have you got? When have you got to be back at Midhurst?’

  He raised his head and grinned. ‘When I’m ready to go back,’ he said. ‘I been away so long a few days more won’t make any difference.’ He paused. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I only came here to see if you were all right, Joe,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’ll go down to Brisbane and start looking for a boat home next week.’

  Their food came, roast beef for Joe, cold ham and salad for Jean. ‘What have you been doing since you came to Cairns?’ he asked presently. ‘Been out to the Reef?’

  She shook her head. ‘I went down to Rockhampton once, and I went on one of the White Tours up to the Tableland, and stayed a night in Atherton. I’ve not been anywhere else.’

  ‘Oh my word,’ he said. ‘You can’t go home without seeing the Great Barrier Reef.’ He paused, and then he said, ‘Would you like to go to Green Island for the weekend?’

  She cocked an eye at him. ‘What’s Green Island like?’

  ‘It’s just a coral island on the reef,’ he explained. ‘A little round one, about half a mile across. There’s a restaurant on it and little sort of bedroom huts where you can stay, in among the trees. It’s a bonza little place if you like bathing. Wear your bathers all the day.’

  Jean thought the little bedroom huts among the trees wanted checking up on, but the suggestion certainly had its points. They knew so little about each other; they had so much to learn, so much to talk about. Whatever else might happen if she spent a weekend in her bathing dress with Joe Harman on a coral island, they would certainly come from it knowing more about each other than they would learn under the restraints of Cairns.

  ‘I’d like to do that, Joe,’ she said. ‘How would we get there?’

  He beamed with pleasure, and she was glad for him. ‘I’ll slip out after tea and find Ernie,’ he said. ‘He’s probably in the bar at Hides. He’s got a boat, and he’ll run us out there tomorrow; it’ll take about three hours. We’d better start about eight o’clock, before the sun gets hot. Then I’d ask him to come out and fetch us on Monday, say.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But look, Joe – this is to be Dutch treat.’ He did not understand that term. ‘I mean, you pay the boat one way and I’ll pay it the other, and we both pay our own bills.’ He objected strenuously. ‘If we don’t do that, Joe, I won’t come,’ she said. ‘I’ll think you’re plotting to do me a bit of no good.’

  He grinned. ‘Too right.’ And then he said, ‘All right, Mrs Boong, we’ll each pay our own whack.’

  He went out after tea and came back to her on the veranda half an hour later; he had found Ernie and arranged the boat, and he had bought a large basket of fruit to take with them. In the quick dusk and the darkness they sat together for some hours, talking of everything but Willstown. She learned a lot about his early life on the various stations, and about his relations in and around Cloncurry, about his war service, and about Midhurst. ‘It’s got a bonza rainfall, Midhurst has,’ he said. ‘We got thirty-four inches in the last wet; down at Alice it’s a good year if you get ten inches. I’ve been asking Mrs Spears if we couldn’t build a couple of dams at the head of the creeks to hold back some of the water – one across the head of Kangaroo Creek and one on the Dry Gum.’

  ‘Did she agree?’

  ‘She’ll pay for them,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, of course, to get the labour. You can’t get chaps to come and work in the outback. It’s a fair cow.’

  ‘Why is that?’ she asked. She had a very good idea, herself, but she wanted to hear his views.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They all want to go and work in the towns.’

  She did not pursue the subject; there was time enough for that. They talked of pleasant, unimportant things; she found that he was very anxious to get back to Midhurst to see his horses and his dogs. ‘I got a bitch called Lily,’ he said. ‘Her mother was a blue cattle dog and she got mated by a dingo, so Lily’s half a dingo. She’s a bonza dog. Well, I mated her with another blue cattle dog before I come away and she’ll have had the litter now, so they’ll be quarter dingo. A cross between a dingo and cattle dog makes a grand dog, but you’ve got to get the dingo strain weak or they aren’t reliable. I had a quarter dingo dog before the war at Wollara, and he was grand.’

  He told her that he had about sixty saddle and pack horses on the station, but they did not seem to be as close to his heart as his dogs. ‘A dog comes into the homestead and sits around with you in the evenings,’ he said, and she could picture the long, lonely nights that were his normal life. ‘You couldn’t get along in the outback without dogs.’

  At ten o’clock they went to bed, prepared for an early start in the morning. They stood together in the darkness by the entrance to her room for a moment. ‘Have I changed much, Joe?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t have known you again.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would. Six years is a long time.’

  ‘You haven’t changed at all, really,’ he said. ‘You’re the same person underneath.’

  ‘I think I am,’ she said slowly. ‘After the war I felt like an old woman, Joe. After Kuantan, I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy anything again.’ She smiled. ‘Like a weekend at Green Island.’

  ‘There’s nothing to do there, you know,’ he said. ‘You bathe and go out in a glass-bottomed boat to see the coral and the fishes.’

  ‘I know. It’s going to be such fun.’

  They left next morning in Ernie’s fishing boat, a motor launch with a canopy. For two hours they chugged out over a smooth sea, trolling a line behind and catching two large, brilliantly coloured horse-mackerel. Green Island appeared after an hour as the tops of coconut palms visible above the horizon; as they drew near the little circular island appeared, fringed round completely with a white coral beach. There was a long landing-stage built out over the shallow water of the reef; they landed and walked down this together, pausing to look at the scarlet and blue fishes playing round the coral heads below.

  There were no other visitors staying on the island and they got two of the little bedroom huts in among the trees; these huts had open sides to let the breeze blow through, with an occasional curtain for privacy. They bathed at once and met upon the beach; Jean had a new white two-piece costume and was flattered at the reception that it got. ‘It’s pretty as a picture,’ he said. ‘Oh my word.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s not enough of it to fill a picture frame, Joe.’

  ‘Too right,’ he said. ‘But there aren’t any wowsers here.’

  ‘I’ll have to look out I don’t get burnt,’ she said. ‘I bet I’m the whitest woman that ever bathed here.’

  ‘You are in parts,’ he observed. He stood looking at her, reluctant to take his eyes off her beauty. ‘You’ve been out in the sun up top, though.’

  Her shoulders and her arms were tanned; there was a hard line above her breasts, brown above and white below. ‘That’s where I was wearing a sarong in Malaya,’ she said. ‘While they were building the well. In the village we used to wear the sarong up high, under the arms. It’s beautifully cool like that, and yet it protects most of you from sunburn. And it’s reasonably decent, too.’

  ‘Have you got it here?’ he asked.

  She
nodded. ‘I’m going to put it on presently.’

  As they turned to go into the water she saw his back for the first time, lined and puckered and distorted with enormous scars. Deep pity for him welled up in her at the sight; this man had been hurt enough for her already. She must not hurt him any more. He glanced back at her and said, ‘We’d better not go in more than about knee-deep. There’s plenty of sharks round here.’ And then he looked at her more closely, and said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  She laughed quickly. ‘It’s the sun,’ she said. ‘It’s making my eyes water. I ought to have brought my dark glasses.’

  ‘I’ll go and get them. Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t want them, really.’ She threw herself forward in a shallow dive over the sand in about two feet of water and rolled over on her back, flirting the water from her face. ‘It’s marvellous,’ she said. He flung himself forward, wallowed for a little, and sat beside her on the coral sand in the warm sea. ‘Tell me, Joe,’ she said. ‘Do sharks really come in close like this?’

  ‘They’ll take you in water that’s only waist-deep,’ he said. ‘Oh my word, they will. I don’t know if there are any here just now. Trouble is, you never can tell. Didn’t you have sharks in Malaya?’

  ‘I think there were,’ she said. ‘The villagers never went out more than about knee-deep, so we didn’t. There were crocodiles in the river, too.’ She laughed. ‘Taking it all in all, there’s nothing to beat a good swimming-pool in a hot country.’

  They rolled over in the blue, translucent water; the sun came shimmering through the ripples and made silvery lights upon the coral sand around them. ‘I’ve never bathed in a swimming-pool,’ he said. ‘They make them with a shallow end, do they? Where you can sit, like this?’

  ‘Of course. They have a shallow and a deep end, with diving-boards at the deep end. Don’t they have swimming-pools here, in Australia?’

  ‘Oh my word. They have them down in places like Sydney and Melbourne. I’ve heard of station owners having them upon their land, too. But places like Cairns and Townsville and Mackay, they’re on the sea, so they don’t need a pool.’

  ‘Mrs Maclean’s got a pool at Alice Springs,’ she said.