A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  There was a long silence. ‘I’m afraid of things, too,’ she said at last.

  He took her hand; he could not bear that she should be afraid of anything in the new life before them. She had been brave enough last night. ‘What’s that?’ he asked gently.

  She said, ‘I’m afraid of changing your job.’ She paused. ‘I can’t believe that that would ever work out properly, that a man should change his work because his wife couldn’t stand conditions that he could. You’ve been used to a property about two thousand square miles big, Joe, going off for three weeks at a time with packhorses and never going off your own land. What would a man like you do on a thousand acres?’

  He grinned weakly; she had put her finger on the spot. ‘Get accustomed to it pretty soon, I should think.’

  ‘I know you’d do it,’ she said quietly. ‘You might even learn to do it reasonably well. But it could never satisfy you after the Gulf country, and cinemas won’t fill the gap, or streets of shops, or dance halls. And sometimes when we squabble – we shall squabble, Joe – you’ll think about your old life in the Gulf country, and how you had to give it up, because of me. And I shall know you’re thinking that and blaming it on me, and that will be between us all the time. That’s what I’m afraid of, Joe. I think we ought to stay up in the Gulf country, where your work is.’

  ‘You just said you couldn’t stand Willstown,’ he objected. ‘Burketown and Croydon – well, they’re just the same.’

  ‘I know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’m not being very reasonable, am I? First I say I couldn’t stand living in a place like that, and then I say that you oughtn’t to think of living anywhere else.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He was puzzled and distressed. ‘We’ve got to try and work it out some way to find what suits us both.’

  ‘There’s only one way to do that, Joe.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She smiled at him. ‘We’ll have to do something about Willstown.’

  8

  They spent that day in a curious mixture of love-making and economic discussion. ‘You can’t tell me that a country with three times the rainfall of the Territory can’t support a town as good as Alice,’ she said once. ‘I know Alice has a railway. Willstown’s got rain, and I know which I’d rather have for raising cattle. If you go on doing that, Joe, I’ll go off and sit by myself. We aren’t married yet.’ She removed his hand and kissed it.

  ‘Rain’s not the only thing you want for raising cattle,’ he said. ‘The better the feed, of course, the more calves live through the dry and the more you’ve got to sell. But there’s a lot more to it than that, oh my word.’

  ‘Tell me, Joe.’ She had his hand in a firm grip.

  ‘One thing,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to keep that water when you’ve got it. It’s true that Midhurst gets a lot of rainfall, but it’s all gone in a flash. We get rain from the middle of December till the end of February, and you’ll see the creeks all running full in flood. But three weeks later, by the end of March, they’ll be all dry again, and the country as dry as ever.’

  ‘Is that what you want to build the dams for, at Kangaroo Creek and Dry Gum Creek?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I want to make a start with building little kind of barrages to hold back the water. Do a bit each year, starting at the head of each creek and working down. Get a little pool held back every two or three miles all down the creeks till they run out into the Gilbert. They wouldn’t hold the water right through the dry, of course; the sun’s too strong. But you could add a lot of feed to Midhurst if you had a lot of little dams like that. Oh my word, you could.’

  She released his hand. ‘How big is Midhurst, Joe?’

  ‘Eleven hundred square miles.’

  ‘How many cattle does it carry?’

  ‘About nine thousand. Ought to carry more than that, but it’s dry up at the top end. Very dry.’

  ‘Suppose you could get all the little dams that you’re imagining. How many would it carry then?’

  He thought for a minute. ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t carry double what’s on it now. That’ld be about sixteen to the mile. With a rainfall like we’ve got you should be able to do that.’

  ‘You sold fourteen hundred head this year, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How much a head?’

  ‘Four pound sixteen.’

  She grabbed his hand again, and held it imprisoned. ‘I’m trying to think, Joe. If you doubled the stock on the station you’d have another fourteen hundred to sell each year. That’s – that’s between six and seven thousand pounds a year more to sell. You’d be selling twelve or thirteen thousand pounds worth every year then, Joe. It’ld be worth spending a bit of capital on dams to get that rise in turnover, wouldn’t it?’

  He looked at her with a new respect. ‘Well, that’s the way I worked it out. I told Mrs Spears, I said, I want to keep a permanent gang of three men and a few Abos on this. Do a bit each year, working down from the top. Spend about fifteen hundred a year, you might say. There’d be less profit the first year, but after that it should rise steadily to nearly double. That’s what I told her.’

  ‘She agreed, did she?’

  ‘She’s agreed to spend the money. But that’s only the start of it, the easy part. It may be years before I get the men.’

  She looked at him incredulously. ‘Years?’

  ‘Too right,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s all very well to think of things like that, but it’s another thing to do them. Might be five years before I get the work in hand. You see, there’s only three of us on Midhurst – whites, that is – me and Jim Lennon, and Dave Hope. We’ve got to find three more who’ll work out all the week up-country, forty miles from the homestead, working with a pick and shovel mostly, and responsible enough to get on by themselves with only just a visit once a week or once a fortnight. Well, you can’t get men like that. There are fewer people in the Gulf country every year. If it wasn’t for the Abo stockmen, the boongs, I don’t know what we’d do.’

  ‘Are there really only three of you – whites – running Midhurst?’

  He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘When you come it’ll be four.’

  She thought it would be five or six soon after that, but she refrained from saying so. ‘How many would you like to have?’

  ‘You mean with eighteen thousand head of cattle, some time in the future?’ She nodded. ‘I could use twenty on a station like that,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be too many, not if you were running tame bulls in a paddock, to improve the stock. There’d be fences and stockyards and all sorts of things to make. I could use twenty white ringers, and some other hands besides.’

  She said slowly, ‘Pete Fletcher said that there were fifty ringers coming into Willstown, using it as their town.’

  ‘That’s about right,’ he said.

  ‘If all the stations developed like you say,’ she observed, ‘that means seven times as many ringers, because there are only three of you now. Three or four hundred ringers in the district, all with wives and families, and shops for them, and pubs, and garages, and radio, and cinemas. There’s room here for a town of two or three thousand people, Joe.’

  He smiled. ‘You’ll be making it as big as Brisbane next.’

  She said severely, ‘Joe. There was an old girl in our party in Malaya called Mrs Frith. She thought you must be Jesus Christ, because you’d been crucified. I tried to tell her that you weren’t. If she saw what you’re doing now she’d probably believe me.’

  They talked about Mrs Frith for a time, and then reverted to more mundane matters. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘listen to me. Would you think it very stupid if I said I wanted to start a business in Willstown?’

  He stared at her. ‘A business? What sort of business could you do in Willstown?’

  ‘Do you know what I was doing in England?’ she inquired.

  ‘Shorthand typing, wasn’t it?’ he asked.

  She took his h
and and smoothed it between her own. ‘There’s such a lot that you don’t know about me,’ she said. ‘So much to tell you.’ She started in to tell him about Pack and Levy, and Mr Pack, and about alligator-skin shoes, and Aggie Topp. Half an hour later she said, ‘That’s what I want to do, Joe. Do you think it’s crazy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ And then, quite unexpectedly, he said, ‘I took a walk down Bond Street, looking in the shops.’

  She turned to him, surprised. ‘Did you, Joe?’

  He nodded. ‘I asked Mr Strachan what I ought to see in London and he asked me how much history I knew and I told him that I never got much schooling. So then he said to go and see St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, and then he said to take the bus to Piccadilly Circus and walk up Regent Street and along Oxford Street and down Bond Street and back along Piccadilly; he said I’d see all the best shops that way.’

  She nodded. It seemed very far away from Green Island, and the whisper of the coconut palms overhead in the sea breeze.

  ‘I saw a lot of alligator-skin shoes,’ he said. ‘Sort of dressing-cases, too.’ He turned to her. ‘It was interesting seeing those, and wondering if they were skins that old Jeff Pocock trapped. Made me feel quite at home. Beautifully done up, they were. But the prices – oh my word. Most of them hadn’t got no labels, but there was one, just a little alligator-skin case with silvery things in it, for a lady. A hundred guineas, that one was.’

  She was excited. ‘Joe, I bet that was made by Pack and Levy. We did all that sort of work.’

  ‘You weren’t thinking you could make that sort of stuff in Willstown?’

  ‘Not cases, Joe. Just shoes – shoes to start with, anyway. A little workshop with six or seven girls making alligator-skin shoes. It won’t cost very much, Joe – not more than I can afford to lose if it goes wrong. But I don’t know – perhaps it won’t go wrong. If it worked out all right, and if it paid, it’ld be a good thing for the town.’

  ‘Six or seven girls all earning money at a job in Willstown?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You wouldn’t keep them six weeks. They’d all be married – oh my word, they would.’

  She laughed. ‘Then I’d have to find six or seven more.’ She got up. ‘Let’s go and bathe. It’ll be too hot if we don’t bathe soon.’

  They went and changed and lay in the clean, silvery water on the coral sand. ‘Look at those bruises,’ she said. ‘You great bully. Hit somebody your own size.’ And presently she said, ‘I’ve got another shock for you. You won’t drown if I tell you now? I want to start an ice-cream parlour.’

  ‘Oh my word.’

  ‘I’m going to pay these girls a lot of money, Joe,’ she said seriously. ‘I’ve got to get some of it back.’

  He looked at her, uncertain if she were laughing or not. ‘An ice-cream parlour in Willstown?’ he said. ‘It’ll never pay.’

  ‘You wait till you see what I charge for an ice-cream,’ she said. ‘Not only ice-cream, Joe – fruit and vegetables, quick frozen stuff, and women’s magazines, and cosmetics, and all the little bits of things that women want. I’ve got a very pretty girl who wants to come and run it for me, a girl called Rose Sawyer who lives in Alice Springs.’

  He said slowly, ‘If you’ve got a girl like that to run it, the women won’t be able to get in the shop. It’ll be full of ringers.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘so long as they buy ice-cream.’ She turned to him. ‘Joe, did you ever spend a Sunday in Alice Springs?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think I ever did. Not since before the war, anyway.’

  ‘I know why that is, too,’ she said. ‘The pubs are shut.’ He grinned. ‘Too right.’

  ‘The pub’s shut in Willstown, too, on Sundays.’

  ‘The bar’s shut,’ he said. ‘You can usually get it out of Ma Connor, round the back.’

  She rolled over in the water. ‘I’ll have to tip off Sergeant Haines, Joe. Sunday’s the best day of all for the ice-cream parlour at Alice. All the men who are in the bar all the week come along with their wives and kids on Sunday to the ice-cream parlour and put down ice-cream sodas and Coca-Cola. That place does a roaring trade on Sundays.’

  ‘It would,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There’d be nothing else to do.’

  They got out of the sea presently and went and sat in the shade; he would not let her stay in long for fear of sunburn. When they were smoking together under the trees, he said, ‘It’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money, all this you want to do. Three or four thousand pounds, I’d say, or more than that.’

  ‘I’ve got enough,’ she said.

  He turned to her. ‘Mr Strachan told me you were a wealthy woman,’ he said quietly. ‘It worried me, that did, till I got used to the idea. How much have you got? Don’t tell me if you’d rather not say, but if I knew about how much I’d be able to help you more.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Nothing would come between them now, after last night. ‘Mr Strachan says I’ve got about fifty-three thousand pounds. It’s all in trust for me until I’m thirty-five, though. If I want to spend capital before then, I’ve got to ask him.’

  ‘Oh my word.’

  ‘It is a lot of money, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m glad that it’s in trust for me in a way, because I wouldn’t in the least know what to do with it. And Noel has been such a dear.’ She paused. ‘I want to do something useful with it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about real business. The only thing I know about at all is what Pack and Levy made. I thought if we could start a little workshop of that sort, and a shop where women could get things they like – well, even if it didn’t pay very well, it’ll be using money the way money ought to be used, in places like Willstown.’

  He bent and kissed her. ‘There’s another thing, Joe,’ she said. ‘I don’t know, but I’ve got a sort of feeling that there’s more to it than just employing a few girls. You say the ringers are all leaving the Gulf country, and men won’t come to the outback. Well, of course they won’t if they can’t get a girl. And all the girls go because they can’t get a job. For every girl I make a job for, I believe you’ll get a man to work at Midhurst. Don’t you think that’s true?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He stared out over the sea to the dim blue line of the Tableland. ‘It’ld certainly help to have a flock of girls around. It can be lonely in the outback, oh my word.’

  A poignant realization of the solitude struck her. The long nights alone in the homestead, when ‘you couldn’t get along in the outback without dogs’. The sensitive, intelligent face of the manager of Carlisle, Eddie Page, who had married his illiterate, inarticulate lubra. She turned to him with quick understanding and sympathy. ‘I feel an awful pig asking you to wait,’ she said. He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I do want to try and start this business before we get married, Joe,’ she said. She smiled at him. ‘You know, you’re a pretty energetic lover. I don’t believe you’ll waste much time starting a family.’

  He grinned, ‘I won’t go quicker than you want to.’

  ‘I want to have them, too.’ She pulled his head down to her and kissed him. ‘But that means I’ll only have six months for business after we get married, and then I’ll have to begin thinking of other things. Joe, when do you start mustering?’

  ‘After the wet,’ he said. ‘It was March this year because of the late season, but normally we’d start mustering about the middle of February.’

  ‘How long does the muster go on for?’

  ‘About three weeks or a month. After that there’s the branding of the calves, and driving the stock down to Julia Creek.’

  ‘Could we get married after the mustering, Joe? Say early in April?’ ‘Of course.’

  She said thoughtfully, ‘That would mean that I’d have nearly a year from now, to get it to the stage when I could leave the business for a month or two while we start your family. I think that’s fair enough. If it couldn’t run without me for a month by then the whole thing wouldn’t be much good, and we�
��d better pack it up.’

  He said, ‘I’ll be around, of course.’

  She laughed. ‘Handing out ice-creams and selling lipsticks to young girls. I won’t ask you to do that, Joe.’

  He thought about this programme. ‘Jim could drive the stores alone down to Julia Creek,’ he said, ‘while we’re getting married. I’d send Bourneville and some of the other boongs with him. Then we could drive down in the utility and catch him up about the time he got there, and put them on the train. Have it as a kind of honeymoon.’

  She smiled. ‘I like your idea of a honeymoon.’ He grinned. ‘Is there anything to do in Julia Creek, Joe, except drink beer?’

  ‘Oh my word,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty to do in Julia Creek.’

  ‘What is there to do there?’

  ‘Put fifteen hundred cattle into railway trucks.’ He grinned at her. ‘There’s not many English girls get a chance of a honeymoon like that,’ he said.

  They went and changed for lunch, and over lunch he said, ‘About this tanning and dressing the alligator skins. I’d give that away.’ He was very much against attempting to do that in Willstown; it was messy work, unsuitable for girls, and no men were available to do it. He told her that there was a tannery in Cairns who could dress any skins she sent them. ‘A joker called Gordon runs it,’ he said. ‘He was over in the Gulf country last year. We could go and see him tomorrow afternoon if you like.’

  ‘Would he have any white kid basils, do you think?’

  ‘Might do. If not he’ll probably get them.’

  With his knowledge of station management he was a great help to her with suggestions for the workshop. ‘I’d make it good and big, while you’re at it,’ he said. ‘It’s the transport of the wood to Willstown that’s going to cost the money.’ He thought for a minute. ‘There’s three of you new girls coming in to five in Willstown, if all goes right,’ he said. ‘You and this Rose Sawyer and this Aggie Topp. Why don’t you make your workshop building a bit bigger and have three bed-sitting-rooms at the end, walled off from the rest of it and with a separate entrance? Then you wouldn’t have to live in the hotel and you’d be all comfortable by yourselves. Then if the business grows up you can pull down the wall and throw it all into one.’ This seemed to her to be a very good idea indeed.