A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  ‘I know. They only made it a year or two ago. I’ve never seen it.’

  She rolled over on her back, and watched a seagull soaring in the thermals from the island. ‘You could have a pool at Willstown,’ she said. ‘You’ve got all the water in the world, from the bore, running to waste right in the middle of the town. You could make a lovely swimming-pool right opposite the hotel.’

  ‘That water isn’t running to waste,’ he observed. ‘Oh my word. The cattle drink that, in the dry.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt the cattle if we borrowed it first and used it for a swimming-pool,’ she said. ‘It’ld taste all the sweeter.’

  ‘Might taste sweeter if you swam in it,’ he concurred. ‘I don’t know about me.’

  He would not let her stay in the water more than a quarter of an hour. ‘You’ll burn,’ he said. ‘Midday, like this, you can burn just as easy in the sea as on the land. You want to be careful, with a skin as white as yours.’ They went up from the beach into the shade of the trees and sat smoking for a time; then they went back to their huts to put on a little more covering for lunch. Australian hotels, she had discovered, are very particular about dress at mealtimes; in Cairns even on the hottest day of summer a man without a jacket and tie would not be served in the dining-room, nor would a woman in slacks.

  Harman had arranged a light lunch for her, cold meat and fruit; she was touched by the care that he was taking to make her weekend a success. While struggling to eat a mango decently she asked, ‘Joe, why don’t places like Willstown have more fresh fruit? Won’t it grow?’

  ‘Mangoes grow all right,’ he said. ‘We’ve got three or four mango trees at Midhurst. Aren’t there any in the town? I’d have thought there must be.’

  ‘I don’t believe there are. I never saw any fruit in the hotel, or anywhere on sale.’

  ‘Oh well, maybe you wouldn’t. People don’t seem to bother much about it. Some places have every shade tree a mango tree. Cooktown, in the early summer you drive over them, all along the road.’

  ‘Don’t the people like fresh fruit and vegetables? I mean, they get all sorts of skin diseases through not having them.’

  ‘It’s too hot for the old folks to work in gardens, like in other places,’ he said. ‘There aren’t enough people in the country to grow things like that. We can’t even get men to work as ringers on the stations – we have to use two-thirds boongs as stockmen, or more. There just aren’t enough people. They won’t come to the outback.’

  ‘She said thoughtfully, There were plenty of fresh vegetables at Alice Springs.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘Alice is different. Alice is a bonza little town.’

  They slept on their beds in the heat of the day after lunch and bathed again before tea; in the cool of the evening they went out to the end of the jetty and fished. They caught some sand snappers and three or four brilliant red and blue fish which were poisonous to eat and had to be handled with a glove because they stung; then tiring of this rather unprofitable sport they rolled up their lines and sat and watched the sunset over the heights of the Atherton Tableland on the horizon. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ Jean said. ‘You go to a new country, and you expect everything to be different, and then you find there’s such a lot that stays the same. That sunset looks just like it does in England, on a fine summer evening.’

  ‘Do you see much that’s like England here?’ he asked.

  She smiled. ‘Not on Green Island, and not much in Willstown. But in Cairns – a lot. Vauxhall and Austin motor cars parked in the streets, and politicians telling people to buy British, and the North British Insurance Company, and Tattersalls, and bank clerks in the hotel listening to “Itma”. Even the newsboys selling papers in the street – “Read all about it”. Listening to them with your eyes shut, they sound just the same. They used to shout exactly like that when I lived in Ealing.’

  ‘Ealing’s the place near London where you lived when you were working, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s a part of London, really – a suburb.’

  ‘Are you going to live there again when you go home?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Joe.’

  In the evening light, sitting together on the jetty and watching the sunset over the calm water, she had expected him to follow up this opening, and she was disappointed that he did not do so. She had expected more than this of him, and that she didn’t get it was beginning to distress her. She had expected to spend the whole weekend on the defensive, in repelling boarders, so to speak, but so far things had worked out very differently. Joe Harman’s behaviour toward her had been above reproach; he had not tried to kiss her or even to make opportunities of touching her. But for the fact that he had been to England for no other purpose than to look for her, she might have thought he wasn’t interested in her at all. By the end of the day she was becoming seriously worried about his restraint. She had caused him enough pain already.

  It was no better when they went to bed. She would have liked to have been kissed, in the quiet darkness under the palm trees, but Joe didn’t do it. They said goodnight in the most orderly way, not even shaking hands, and they retired to their own huts with perfect decorum. Jean lay awake for some time, restless and troubled. She had taken it for granted that they would arrive at some emotional conclusion at Green Island, but if things went on as they were going they would leave on Monday with nothing settled at all. If that happened, she would have to go down to Brisbane and go home; there would be no excuse for doing anything else. The thought was almost unbearable.

  She knew that her English ways were strange to him; he could not know how very willing she was to adapt herself to his Queensland life. Perhaps, too, her money stood between them. She did not think that so sincere and genuine a man would have any scruples about marrying a girl with money, but it might well make him shy of her. She had a feeling that there was a difference between herself, a strange, wealthy, English girl, and an Australian girl from Cairns. If Joe Harman had been so much interested in a girl from Cairns, Jean thought, she would have been in bed with him by then; whereas she herself had not even been kissed.

  She lay awake for a long time.

  Things were no better the next day. They bathed in the cool of the morning in that marvellous translucent sea; they walked out upon the reef at low tide to see the coloured coral; they paddled about in a glass-bottomed boat to see the coloured fishes, and a good six inches separated them all the time. By teatime they were finding that they had exhausted their light conversation; the restraint was heavy upon both of them, and there were long awkward pauses when neither of them seemed to know what to say.

  In the evening light they decided to walk round the island on the beach. She left him at the door of her hut, and said, ‘Give me a couple of minutes, Joe. I don’t want to go around the beach in this frock.’ She pulled one of the curtains for privacy; as she changed she thought that they had only one more day, and so much to settle that they had not started on. She would get nowhere without taking a bit of a risk, and it was worth it for Joe.

  In the half light he turned as she came out of the hut, and he was back in the Malay scene of six years ago. She was wearing the same old faded cotton sarong or one very like it, held up in a roll under her arms; her brown shoulders and her brown arms were bare. She was barefooted, and her hair hung down in a long plait, tied at the end with a bit of string, as it had been in Malaya. She was no longer the strange English girl with money; she was Mrs Boong again, the Mrs Boong he had remembered all those years. She came to him rather shyly and put both hands on his shoulders, and said, ‘Is this better, Joe?’

  She could never remember very clearly what happened in the next five minutes. She was standing locked in his arms as he kissed her face and her neck and her shoulders hungrily while his hands fondled her body; in the tumult of feelings that swept over her she knew that this man wanted her as nobody had ever wanted her before. She sto
od unresisting in his arms; it never entered her head to struggle or to try to get away. But presently, when she had breath to speak, she said, Oh, Joe! ‘They’ll see us from the house!’

  The next thing that she realized was that they were in her bedroom hut. She never knew how they got there, but thinking of it afterwards she came to the conclusion that he must have picked her up and carried her. And now a new confusion came to her. A sarong held up by a tight roll above the breasts will stay in place all day if given proper usage but it does not stand up very well to energetic man-handling; she could feel that it was getting loose and falling, and she had no other garment on at all.

  Standing in his arms still unresisting, smothered by his kisses, she thought, this is It. And then she thought, It had to happen sometime, and I’m glad it’s Joe. And then she thought, It’s not his fault, I brought this on myself. And then she thought, I must sit down or something, or I’ll be stark-naked, and at that she escaped backwards from his arms and sat down on the bed.

  He followed her down, laughing, and her eyes laughed back at him as she tried to hold her sarong up with her hand to hide her bosom. Then she was in his arms again and he was hindering her. And then he said quite simply, ‘Do you mind?’

  She reached her right arm round his shoulders, and said quietly, ‘Dear Joe. Not if you’ve got to. If you can wait till we’re married, I’d much rather, but whatever you do now, I’ll love you just the same.’

  He looked down into her eyes. ‘Say that again.’

  She drew his head down to her and kissed him. ‘Dear Joe. Of course I’m in love with you. What do you think I came to Australia for?’

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘Of course I’ll marry you.’ She looked up at him with fondness and with laughter in her eyes. ‘Anyone looking at us now would say we were married already.’

  He grinned; he was holding her more gently now. ‘I don’t know what you must think of me’

  ‘Shall I tell you?’ She took one of his wounded hands in hers and fondled the great scars. ‘I think you’re the man I want to marry and have children by.’ It did not seem to matter now that the sarong had fallen to her waist. ‘I’d rather wait a few months and get our lives arranged a little first, Joe. Marriage is a big thing, and there are things that ought to be done, first, before we marry. But if you say we can’t wait, then I’ll marry you tomorrow, or tonight.’

  He drew her to him gently, and kissed her fingertips. ‘I can wait. I’ve waited six years for this, and I can wait a bit longer.’

  She said softly, ‘Poor Joe. I’ll try and make it easy, and not tantalize you. I oughtn’t to have done this.’ She freed herself from his arms and pulled up the sarong and rolled it round. ‘Just get outside a minute, and I’ll put on some more clothes.’

  He said, ‘You don’t need to do that. I won’t do anything, except kiss you now and then. Stay that way for tonight, as if it was Malaya.’

  ‘Just for tonight,’ she said. They went out presently and stood upon the beach in the bright moonlight, holding each other close. ‘I never knew a man could be so happy,’ he said once.

  Half an hour later she said, ‘Joe, we’re both tired now, and it’s time for bed. We’ve got an awful lot to talk about, but we’ll talk better in the morning. There’s just one thing I want to say tonight. If you ever feel you can’t bear waiting any longer, you’ll tell me, won’t you? If you come to me like that, I promise we’ll get married right away, or sooner than that.’

  He said gently, ‘I can wait a long time for you, after this.’

  ‘Dear Joe. I won’t keep you waiting any more than I can help.’

  She was so tired that when she got into her hut she did not light the candle, but fell upon her bed and loosened her sarong, Malay fashion, and slept almost at once. She woke with the first light of dawn and lay reflecting upon what had happened, absurdly happy; at last, she felt, things were going to go right, between them. She got up as the sun rose and peered cautiously over to Joe’s hut and the restaurant building. There was no sign of any movement anywhere, so she put on her bathing dress and went down to the sea and had a bathe. Lying in the shallow water as the sun rose she discovered a number of bruises on her person, and reflected on the narrowness of her escape from a fate worse than death.

  She went back very quietly to her hut and put on a frock. Then she went over to the restaurant. It stood open but there was nobody about; she put the kettle on the oil stove and made a pot of tea. Carrying a cup she went to Joe’s hut and peered in cautiously.

  He was lying on the bed asleep in a pair of shorts; she stood there for some minutes, watching him as he slept. The troubled lines had vanished from his face and he was sleeping easily and quietly, like a little boy; the scars upon his back stood out with an appalling and contrasting ferocity. She stood watching him for a time with fondness in her eyes, knowing that she would see him so most of the mornings of her life to come, and the thought pleased her.

  She moved a little and put down the cup, and when she looked at him again he had opened his eyes, and he was looking at her. ‘Morning, Joe,’ she said, wondering if she ought to be running like a rabbit. ‘I’ve made you a cup of tea.’

  He leaned up on one arm. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Did what I think happened last night really happen?’

  ‘I think so, Joe,’ she said. ‘I think it must have done. I’ve got bruises all over me.’

  He stretched out one hand. ‘Come here, and let me give you a kiss.’

  She retreated. ‘Not on your life. I’ll give you a kiss when you’ve got up and had a bathe and got some clothes on.’

  He laughed. ‘Aren’t you going to bathe?’

  ‘I’ve bathed,’ she said. ‘I’ve been up and pottering about for an hour, while you’ve been sleeping. I’ll come down and watch you.’

  He asked, ‘Did you sleep all right?’

  She nodded. ‘Like a log.’

  ‘So did I.’ They smiled with mutual understanding. ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll come down to the beach.’

  She sat on the sand and chatted to him while he bathed. Then he came out and went to shave, and presently appeared in a clean shirt and a clean pair of khaki drill slacks, and she came into his arms and gave him his kiss. Then, as there was no sign yet of breakfast, they sat very close together on the beach in the cool morning breeze, talking and talking and talking. They had no difficulty in finding things to talk of now, and even their silences were intimate.

  After breakfast, as they sat smoking cigarettes over a last cup of coffee, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. I’m going to give up Midhurst, soon as Mrs Spears can find another manager.’ She listened in consternation; what was coming now? ‘If we could get a grazing farm for fattening, in back of Adelaide, at Mallala or Hamley Bridge or Balaklava or some place like that, that’s on the railway down from Alice Springs and not too far from the abattoir, that’s what I’d like to do. I think we might be able to find a place like that only about fifty miles from the city, so as we could get in any time.’

  She sat in silence for a minute; this needed careful handling. ‘Why do you want to do that, Joe? What’s wrong with Midhurst?’

  ‘It’s too far from anywhere,’ he said. ‘All right for a single man, perhaps, but not for a married couple. Now Adelaide’s a bonza city. I’m a Queenslander, but I like Adelaide better than Brisbane. I haven’t seen Sydney or Melbourne, but Adelaide’s a bonza city, oh my word. It’s got streets and streets of shops, and trams, and cinemas, and dance halls, and it’s a pretty place, too, with hills behind and vineyards growing grapes to make the wine. We could have a bonza time if we got a farm near Adelaide.’

  ‘But Joe,’ she said, ‘is that the sort of work you want to do? Just buying store cattle from the outback and fattening them? It sounds awfully dull to me. Are you fed up with the outback?’

  He ground his cigarette out on the floor beneath his heel. ‘There’s places that suit single men and places that suit married people,’
he said. ‘You’ve got to make a change or two when you get married.’

  They had the breakfast table between them, separating them much too far for their newfound intimacy; she could not deal with so serious a matter as this without touching him. ‘Let’s go outside,’ she said. So they went out and found a patch of sandy grass at the head of the beach in the shade, and sat down there together. ‘I don’t think that’s right, Joe,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think you ought to leave the outback just because we’re getting married.’

  He smiled at her. ‘The Gulf country’s no place for a woman,’ he said. ‘Not unless she’s been brought up and raised in the outback, and sometimes not then. I’ve seen some married people out from England try it, and I’ve never known it work. The life’s too different, too hard.’

  She said slowly, ‘I know it’s very different, and very hard. I’ve lived in Willstown for three weeks, Joe, and so I know a bit about it.’ She took his hand and fondled the great scars between her own two hands. ‘I know what you’re afraid of. You’re afraid that a girl straight out from England, a girl like me, will be unhappy in the outback, Joe. You’re afraid that I’ll get restless and start making excuses to go and stay in the city, for the dentist, or for shopping, and things like that. You’re afraid that if we start at Midhurst you’ll be trying me too hard, and that our marriage will go wrong.’

  She raised her eyes and looked at him. ‘That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it, Joe?’

  He met her eyes. ‘Too right,’ he said. ‘A man hasn’t got a right to try and make an English girl live in a crook place like Willstown.’

  She smiled. ‘It isn’t only English girls, Joe. Australian girls, girls born in Willstown, they run a thousand miles to get away from it.’

  He grinned. ‘That’s right. If they can’t stand it, how could you?’

  ‘I don’t know that I could,’ she said thoughtfully. One had to be honest. ‘Are all the towns in the Gulf country the same?’

  He nodded. ‘Normanton’s a bit bigger; it’s got three pubs instead of one, and it’s got a church.’