雙語·像愛麗絲的小鎮(zhèn) Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Jean made that pair of shoes working upon the dressing-table of her bedroom; to be more exact, she made three pairs before she got a pair that she could wear.

She started off upon Tim Whelan. Tim had made lasts for shoes from time to time, working for various cobblers; the outback woodworker must turn his hand to anything. Jean lent him one of her shoes and lent him her foot to measure in his carpenter's shop, and he made a pair of lasts for her in mulga wood in a couple of days. She asked Pete Fletcher about leather for the soles and heels, and he produced some pieces of tanned cow-skin which were about the right thickness for the soles, and a piece of bull's skin for building up the heels. The lining was a major difficulty at first till somebody suggested a young wallaby skin. Pete Fletcher went out and shot the wallaby and skinned it, and the tanning was carried out by a committee of Pete Fletcher and Al Burns and Don Duncan, working in the back of Bill Duncan's store. The business of this pair of shoes assumed such an importance in the life of Willstown that Jean put off her trip to Cairns for a week, and then another week.

The wallaby skin for the lining was not ready, so Jean made up the first pair with a white satin lining that she bought in the store. She knew every process of shoe-making intimately from the point of view of an onlooker, and from the office end, but she had never done it herself before, and the first pair of shoes were terrible. They were shoes of a sort, but they pinched her toes and the heels were too large by a quarter of an inch, and they hurt her instep. The satin lining was not a success, and the whole job was messy with the streaming perspiration of her fingers. Still, they were shoes, and wearable by anyone whose feet happened to be that shape.

She could not show shoes like that to the men downstairs, and so she set to work to make another pair. She got Tim to alter the lasts for her, bought another knife and a small carborundum stone from the store, and started again. For fixative she was using small tubes of Durofix, also from the store.

In all this work Annie took a great interest. She used to come and sit and watch Jean working as she trimmed and filed the soles or stretched the wet alligator hides carefully upon the lasts.“I do think you're clever to be able to do that,”she said.“They're almost as good as you could buy in a shop.”

The second pair were better. They fitted Jean moderately well, but the wallaby-skin lining was uneven and lumpy, and the whole job was still messy and fingermarked with sweat. Undaunted, she began upon a third pair. This time she used portions of the wallaby skin that were of even thickness, having no means of trimming the skin down, and when it came to the final assembly of the shoes she worked in the early morning when the perspiration of her hands was least. The final result was quite a creditable shoe with rather an ugly coloured lining, but a shoe that she could have worn anywhere.

She took the three pairs downstairs and showed them to Al Burns on the veranda; Al fetched two or three of the other men, and Mrs Connor came to have a look at them.“That's what happens to the alligator skins in England,”Jean said.“They make them up into shoes like that. Pretty, aren't they?”

One of the men said,“You made them yourself, Miss Paget?”

She laughed.“Ask Mrs Connor. She knows the mess I've been making in the bedroom.”

The man turned the shoe over in his hand.“Oh my word,”he said slowly.“It's as good as you'd buy in a shop.”

Jean shook her head.“It's not,”she said.“It's not really.”She pointed out the defects to him.“I haven't got the proper brads or the proper fixative. And the whole thing's messy, too. I just made it up to show you what they do with all these skins that Jeff brings in.”

“I bet you could sell that in Cairns,”the man said, stubbornly.“Oh my word, you could.”

Sam Small said,“How much does a pair of shoes like that cost in England?”

“In a shop?”She thought for a minute.“About four pounds fifteen shillings, I should say. I know the manufacturer gets about forty-five bob, but then there's purchase tax and retailer's commission to go on.”She paused.“Of course, you can pay much more than that for a really good shoe. People pay up to ten pounds in some shops.”

“Ten pounds for a pair of shoes like that? Oh my word.”

Jeff was out of town up the river visiting his traps, so she could not show him the shoes that day. She left them with the men to take into the bar and talk over, and she went to have a bath. She had discovered how to have a bath in Willstown by that time; Annie had showed her. The Australian Hotel had a cold shower for ladies, which was usually a very hot shower because the tank stood in the sun. But if you wanted to wallow in hot water, there was another technique altogether.

Where the water from the bore ran off in a hot stream, a small wooden hut had been constructed spanning the stream, at such a distance from the bore that the temperature was just right for a bath. A rough concrete pool had been constructed here large enough for two bodies to lie in side by side; you took your towel and soap and went to the hut and locked yourself in and bathed in the warm, saline water flowing through the pool. The salts in the water made this bath unusually refreshing.

Jean lay in the warm water, locked in the little hut alone; the sunlight came in through little chinks in the woodwork and played on the water as she lay. Since she had seen Jeff Pocock's alligator skin the idea of making shoes had been in her mind. From the time that she had first met me and learned of her inheritance she had been puzzled, and at times distressed, by the problem of what she was going to do with her life. She had no background of education or environment that would have enabled her to take gracefully to a life of ease. She was a business girl, accustomed to industry. She had given up her work with Pack and Levy as was only natural when she inherited nine hundred a year, but she had found nothing yet to fill the gap left in her life. Subconsciously she had been searching, questing, for the last six months, seeking to find something that she could work at. The only work she really knew about was fancy leather goods, alligator shoes and handbags and attaché cases. She did know a little bit about the business of making and selling those.

She lay in the warm, medicated water, thinking deeply. Suppose a little workshop with about five girls in it, and a small tannery outside. Two handpresses and a rotary polisher; that meant a supply of electric current. A small motor generator set, unless perhaps she could buy current from the hotel. An air conditioner to keep the workshop cool and keep the girls' hands from sweating as they worked. It was imperative that the finished shoes should be virgin clean.

Could such a set-up pay? She lay calculating in her bath. She had discovered that Jeff Pocock got about seventy shillings for an average alligator skin, uncured. She knew that Pack and Levy paid about a hundred and eighty shillings for cured skins. It did not seem to her that it could cost more than twenty shillings to trim and tan an alligator skin, and her figures were in Australian money, too. The skins should be much cheaper than in England. Labour, too, would be cheaper; girl labour in Willstown would be cheaper than girl labour in Perivale. But then there would be the cost of shipping the shoes to England, and an agent's fees.

She wondered if Pack and Levy would sell for her. She knew that Mr Pack had been lukewarm for a long time about the manufacturing side of the business. They did sell other people's products, too —those handbags made by that French firm, Ducros Frères. Pack and Levy sold those, although they made handbags themselves...

The major problem was not the business, she thought. In Willstown both labour and materials were cheap; the business end of it might well be all right. But could she train the sort of girl that she could get in Willstown to turn out first-class quality work, capable of being sold in Bond Street shops? That was the real problem.

She lay for a long time in her warm, medicated bath, thinking very deeply.

That evening as she was sitting in her deckchair on the veranda, Sam Small came to her.“Miss Paget,”he said.“Mind if we have a talk?”

“Of course, Sam,”she said.

“I been thinking about that pair of shoes you made,”he said.“I been wondering if you could teach our Judy.”

“How old is Judy, Sam?”

“Fifteen,”he said.“Sixteen next November.”

“Do you want her to learn shoe-making?”

He said,“I been thinking that anyone who could make a dinkum pair of ladies' shoes like that, they could sell them in Cairns in the shops. You see, Judy's getting to an age when she's got to do some work, and there ain't nothing here a girl can do to make a living. She'll have to go into the cities, like the other girls. Well, that's a crook deal for her mother, Miss Paget. We've only got the one girl—three boys and one girl, that's our litter. It'll be a crook deal for her mother if Judy goes to Brisbane, like the other girls. And I thought this shoe-making, well, maybe it would be a thing that she could do at home. After all,”he said,“it looks like we've got everything you need to do it with, right here in Willstown.”

“Not buckles,”Jean said thoughtfully.“We'd have to do something about buckles.”She was speaking half to herself.

She thought for a minute.“It wouldn't work like that, Sam,”she said.“You think that pair of shoes are wonderful, but they aren't. They're a rotten pair of shoes. You couldn't sell a pair like that in England, not to the sort of people who buy shoes like that. I don't think you could sell them in any first-class shop, even in Cairns.”

“They look all right to me,”he said stubbornly.

She shook her head.“They aren't. I've been in this business, Sam—I know what a shoe ought to look like. I'm not saying that we can't turn out a decent shoe in Willstown; I'd rather like to try. But to get the job right I'll need machinery, and proper benches and hand tools, and proper materials. I see your point about Judy, and I'd like to see her with a job here in Willstown. But it's too big a thing for her to tackle on her own.”

He looked at her keenly.“Was you thinking of a factory or something?”

“I don't know. Suppose somebody started something of the sort here. How many girls would you get to work regular hours, morning and afternoon—say for five pounds a week?”

“Here in Willstown?”

“That's right.”

“How young would you let them start?”

She thought for a minute.“When they leave school, I suppose. That's fourteen, isn't it?”

“You wouldn't pay a girl of fourteen five pounds a week?”

“No. Work them up to that when they got skilled.”

He considered the matter.“I think you'd get six or seven round about sixteen or seventeen, Miss Paget. Then there'd be more coming on from school.”

She turned to another aspect of the matter.“Sam, what would it cost to put up a hut for a workshop?”

“How big?”

She looked around.“About as long as from here to the end of the veranda, and about half as wide.”

“That's thirty foot by fifteen wide. You mean a wooden hut, like it might be an army hut, with an iron roof, and windows all along?”

“That's the sort of thing.”

He calculated slowly in his head.“About two hundred pounds.”

“I think I'd want it to have a double roof and a veranda, like that house that Sergeant Haines lives in. It's got to be cool.”

“Ah, that puts up the cost. A house like that'ld cost you close upon four hundred, with a veranda all around.”

“How long would that take to build?”

“Oh, I dunno. Have to get the timber up from Normanton. Tim Whelan and his boys'ld put that up in a couple of months, I'd say.”

There would be extra buildings needed for the tanning and the dyeing of the hides.“Tell me, Sam,”she said.“Would people here like something of that sort started? Or would they think it just a bit of nonsense?”

“You mean, if it kept the girls here in the town, earning money?”

“That's right.”

“Oh my word,”he said.“Would they like it. They'd like anything that kept the girls at home, so long as they was happy and got work to do.”He paused thoughtfully.“It isn't natural the way the girls go off a thousand miles from home in this country,”he said slowly.“That's what Ma and I was saying the other night. It isn't natural.”

They sat in silence for a time.“Takes a bit of thinking about, Sam,”she said at last.

When the Dakota came next Wednesday she left Willstown for Cairns. She took two days to get there because that was the unhurried way of the Dakota; they left Willstown in the afternoon and called at various cattle stations with the mail and correspondence lessons for the children from the school at Cairns, at Dunbar and Miranda and Vanrook. With the last of the light they put down at Normanton for the night, and drove into the town in a truck.

The hotel at Normanton was similar to the hotel at Willstown, but rather larger. Jean had tea with the pilot, a man called Mackenzie; after tea she sat with him on the veranda. She asked him if anyone made shoes in Normanton.“I don't think so,”he said. He called out to an acquaintance.“Ted, does anyone make shoes round here?”

Ted shook his head.“Buy 'em from Burns Philp,”he said.“Want a pair of shoes mended?”

Jean said,“No—I was just curious. They all come from the cities, do they?”

“That's right.”Ted rolled himself a cigarette.“My wife's sister, she works in a shoe factory down at Rockhampton. That's where a lot of the shoes come from. Manning Cooper, at Rockhampton. That's where Burns Philp get 'em from.”

Jean asked,“Was your wife's sister born round here?”

“Croydon,”he said.“Their Dad used to keep a hotel at Croydon, but he give up; there wasn't work for two. Mrs Bridson's is the only one there now.”

“She's not married?”

“Who? Elsie Peters?”

“That's the one who works at Manning Cooper, is it?”

“No, she's not married. Got to be a charge hand now, with a lot of girls under her.”

When he had moved on Jean asked the pilot,“Who was that?”

“Him? Ted Horner. He runs the garage here.”She noted the name for future reference.

They flew on to Cairns early the next morning; she drove into the town and went to the Strand Hotel. Cairns, she found, was a prosperous town of about twenty thousand people, situated rather beautifully on an inlet of the sea. There were several streets of shops, wide avenues with flower beds down the middle of the road; the buildings were all wood and most had iron roofs. It looked rather like the cinema pictures she had seen of American towns in the deep south, with its wide broad sidewalks shaded by verandas to enable you to look into the shop windows in the shade, but it was almost aggressively English in its loyalties. She liked Cairns from the start.

She wrote to me from there. She had written to me twice from Willstown, and at the Strand Hotel she found a letter from me waiting for her that had been there for some days, on account of her delays. She wrote,

Strand Hotel,

Cairns,

North Queensland

My Dear Noel,

I got your letter of the 24th when I arrived here yesterday, and you will have got my two from Willstown by this time. I wish I had a typewriter because this is going to be a long letter. I think I'll have to get a portable soon in order to keep copies of my letters—not to you, but I'm getting involved a bit in business out here.

First of all, thank you so very much for telling me what you did about Joe Harman. You've evidently been very nice to him and, as you know, that's being nice to me. I can't get over what you say about him rushing off to England and spending all that money, just to see me again. But people out here are like that, I think. I could say an awful lot of rude things about Australians by this time, but I can say this, too. The people that I've met in the outback have all been like Joe Harman, very simple, very genuine, and very true.

And now, about Willstown. I don't know if Joe Harman will still be so keen on marrying me when he sees me; six years is a long time, and people change. I don't know if I'll be keen on marrying him. But if we were to want to marry, what he told you about Willstown is absolutely right.

It's just terrible there, Noel. There are some places in the outback where one could live a fully and happy life. Alice Springs is a grand little town. But Willstown's not one of them. Noel, it's absolutely the bottom. There's nothing for a woman there at all except the washtub. I know that one ought to be able to get along without such things as radio and lipstick and ice-cream and pretty clothes. I think I can get along all right without them—I did in Malaya. But when it comes to no fresh milk and no fresh vegetables or fruit, it's a bit thick. I think that what Joe told you was absolutely right. I don't think any girl could come straight out from England and live happily in Willstown. I don't think I could.

And yet, Noel, I wouldn't want to see Joe try and change his way of life. He's a first-class station manager, and he'll do very well. I asked all sorts of people about the way Midhurst is run, and it's good. I don't say it couldn't be better if he travelled a bit more widely and saw what other cattle breeders do, but relative to the other stations in the Gulf country, Midhurst is pretty good and getting better every year. The last manager let it run down, so they tell me, but Joe's done a good job in the two years that he's been there. I wouldn't want to see Joe try and make his life anywhere else, just because he'd married a rich wife who couldn't or wouldn't live in Willstown, where his work is.

Of course, you'll probably say that he could get another station near a better town, perhaps near Alice. I'm not sure that that would be very easy; I've thought a lot about that one. But if it was possible, I wouldn't like it much. Midhurst is in good country with more rainfall than in England; for a life's work it seems to me that the Gulf country is a far better prospect than anything round Alice. I wouldn't like to think that he'd left good land and gone to bad land, just because of me. That wouldn't be a very good start for a station manager's wife.

Noel, do you think I could have five thousand pounds of my capital? I'm going to take the advice you always shove at me, and not do anything in a hurry. If when I meet Joe Harman he still wants to marry me, and if I want to marry him, I'm going to wait a bit if I can get him to agree. I'd like to work in Willstown for a year or so myself before committing myself to live there for ever. I want to see if I could ever get to adapt myself to the place, or if it's hopeless. I don't want to think that. I would like to find it possible to live in the Gulf country even though I was brought up in England, because they are such very, very decent people living there.

I want to try and start a tiny workshop, making shoes and handbags out of alligator skins. I told you about that in my last letter. It's work I know about, and all the materials are there to hand in the Gulf country, except the metal parts. I've written a long letter this morning to Mr Pack to ask him if he would sell for me in England if the stuff is good enough, and to let me know the maximum price that he could give for shoes delivered at Perivale. And I've asked him to make me out a list of the things I'd want for a workshop employing up to ten girls and what they cost; things like a press and a polisher with the heads for it, and a Knighton No. 6 sewing machine.

The sewing-machine is a heavy duty one for leather and that's the most expensive single item. I should think the lot, including ￡400 for a building to work in, would cost about a thousand pounds. But I'm afraid that's not the whole story. If I'm going to start a workshop for girls, they've got to have something to spend their wages on. I want to start a shop to sell the sort of things that women want.

Not a big shop, just a little one. I want it to be a sort of ice-cream parlour with a few chromium-plated chairs and glass-topped tables. I want to sell fruit there and fresh vegetables; if I can't get them any other way I'll have them flown in from Cairns. There's plenty of money in the outback for that. I want to sell fresh milk there, too; Joe will have to play and keep a few milking cows. I want to sell sweets, and just a few little things like lipstick and powder and face cream and magazines.

The big expense here is the refrigerators and freezes, of course. I think we'd have to allow five hundred pounds for those, and then there's the building and the furniture—say ￡1200 the lot. That makes, say, ￡2500 for capital expenditure. If I have five thousand of my capital, I should be able to stock the shop and the workshop and employ five or six girls for a year without selling anything at all, and by that time the income should be coming in, I think. If it isn't, well that's just too bad and I shall have lost my money.

I want to do this, Noel. Apart from Joe Harman and me, they're decent people in Willstown, and they've got so very little. I'd like to work there for a year as a sort of self-discipline and to keep from running to seed now that I've got all this money. I think I'd want to do this even if there wasn't any Joe Harman in the background at all, but I shan't make up my mind or take any definite step until I've had a talk with him.

So what I want is five thousand pounds, please, Noel. May I have it if I want to go ahead with this?

Jean

I got this letter five days later by the air mail. I marked the passages about her money with a red pencil, and wrote a little note upon the top, and sent it into Lester for him to read. I went into his office later in the day.“You read that letter from the Paget girl?”I asked.

He took it up from his desk before him.“Yes. I've just been looking at the will. Did you draft that discretionary clause yourself?”

“I did.”

He smiled.“I think it's a masterpiece. It covers us all right, if you think she ought to have this money.”

“It's about nine per cent of her capital,”I said.“For a commercial venture that she intends to work at whole-time herself.”

“The testator didn't know her, did he?”

I shook my head.

“She's twenty-seven years old?”

“That is correct.”

“I think that we might let her have it,”he said.“It would be very extreme to do the other thing, to withhold it. We've got ample latitude under your discretionary clause to let her have it, and she seems to be a responsible person.”

“I'd like to think it over for a day or so,”I said.“It seems to me to be a very small amount of capital for what she wants to do.”

I put her letter on one side for a couple of days because I never like to take any action in a hurry. After a period of reflection it seemed to me that I would be carrying out the wishes of the late Mr Douglas Macfadden if I exerted myself to see that Jean Paget did not lose her money in this venture, and I picked up my telephone and rang up Mr Pack of Pack and Levy Ltd.

I said,“Mr Pack, this is Strachan, of Owen, Dalhousie, and Peters. I believe you've had a letter from a client of mine, Miss Jean Paget.”

“Aye, that's right,”he said.“You're her solicitor, are you? The one that's her trustee?”

“That is correct,”I said.“I've had a letter from her, too. I was thinking it might be a good thing if we got together, Mr Pack, and had a talk about it.”

“Well, that suits me,”he replied.“She asked for a list of what she'd want to start up in a small way. I got a list together, but I haven't got all the f.o.b. prices in yet.”

I made an appointment with him for the following Friday when he expected to be in London on other business. He came to see me then at my office. He was a small, fat, cheerful man, very much of a works manager. He brought with him a brown paper parcel.

“Afore we start,”he said,“these come in this morning.”He untied the parcel on my desk and produced a pair of alligator-skin shoes. I picked up one curiously.

“What are these?”I asked.

“They're what she made herself at this place Willstown,”he said.“Did she tell you about that?”

I shook my head, and examined them with fresh interest.“Did she make these herself, with her own hands?”

“Made 'em with her own hands in her hotel bedroom, so she said,”he replied.

I turned one over.“Are they any good?”

“Depends on how you look at it,”he observed.“For selling in the trade they're bloody awful. Look at this, and this, and this.”He pointed out the various irregularities and crudities.“They're not even the same. But she knows that. If you take them as a pair of shoes made by a typist that hadn't ever made a shoe before, working on her bed with no equipment, well, they're bloody marvellous.”

I laid down the shoe and offered him a cigarette.“She told you what she wants to do?”

He told me what he had heard from her, and I told him some of what she had written to me; we talked for a quarter of an hour. At the end of that time I asked him,“What do you really think about her proposition, Mr Pack?”

“I don't think she can do it,”he said flatly.“Not the way she's thinking of. I don't think she knows enough about the shoe business to make a go of it.”

I must say, I was disappointed, but it was as well to have the facts.“I see,”I said quietly.

“You see,”he explained,“she hasn't got the experience. She's a good girl, Mr Strachan, and she's got a good business head. But she's got no experience of making shoes to sell, and she's got no experience of keeping girls in order 'n making them bloody well work for their money. It's not even as if she was in her own country. These Australian country girls she writes about, they're just like so many foreigners to her. They may be willing, but they've never seen a factory before—they won't have the idea at all. She's got to learn her own job and teach them theirs at the same time. Well, she can't do it.”

“I see,”I said again.

“I'd like to help her,”said the little man,“but she'll have to change her ideas a bit. She's on to a good wheeze, if she can put it over. I must say, when I read her letter where it says that she's paying seventy shillings for an alligator skin uncured, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Australian shillings, too—fifty-six bob of our money. Here have I been paying a hundred and seventy, hundred and eighty shillings for a cured skin, all these years, and thinking I was getting 'em cheap at that! I said to Mr Levy, I said, couple of bloody mugs, we are.”

“What can you suggest to help her?”I asked.

“What I thought was this,”he said.“If she could pay the passage of a forewoman out and home, I'd let her have a girl out of my shop, say for the first year. I got a girl that's getting restless—well, a woman she is, thirty-five if she's a day. She's a married woman but she isn't living with her husband—hasn't been for a long time. She was a sergeant in the ATS in the war, out in Egypt some of the time, so she knows about a hot country. Aggie Topp, the name is. You wouldn't get girls playing up in any shop with Aggie Topp in charge.”

“Does Miss Paget know her?”I inquired.

“Oh, aye, Jean knows Aggie. And Aggie knows Jean. Matter of fact, Aggie came in yesterday and handed in her notice. I handed it back to her and jollied her along, you know. She does that every two or three months, getting restless, like I said. But I asked her then, how would she like to go out to Australia for a year to work with Miss Paget. She said she'd go anywhere to get away from standing in a queue for the bloody rations. She'd go out for a year, if Jean wants her. They all liked Jean.”

I said,“Can you spare her?”

“She won't stay long, anyway,”he said.“I don't want to lose her and perhaps I won't. If she gets a trip out to Australia and sees that other places aren't so good as England, then maybe she'll come back and settle down with us again. Get it out of her system.”

We talked about this for a time. The woman's passages and pay while travelling would tot up to about three hundred pounds, but it seemed cheap to me if it would help the venture through the early stages. For the rest of it, Mr Pack thought Jean's estimates of capital were on the low side, but not excessively so.“You can't afford much mechanization in the quality shoe trade,”he said.“You got to keep changing the style all the time.”

About the style, he suggested that they air-mailed a sample to Willstown from time to time for Jean's party to copy. He was quite willing to do the selling for her.“Mind, I don't know if she'll be able to make a go of it upon the prices we can sell at,”he said.“I'll tell her what we can buy at, and it's up to her. But I'd like to give this thing a spin, I must say. Manufacturing's getting so bloody difficult in this country with controls and that, one feels like trying something different.”

I thanked him very sincerely, and he went away. I wrote all this out to Jean Paget by air mail, and I believe Mr Pack wrote to her by the same mail. She did not get these letters for some days after their arrival, because she had gone down to Rockhampton to look for the girl Elsie Peters who worked in the shoe factory there. She went economically by train, a slow, hot journey of some seven hundred miles; till then she had not realized how vast and sparsely populated a state Queensland was. The aeroplanes had dwarfed it for her; fifty-one hours in the train to Rockhampton expanded it again.

She found Elsie Peters, and the meeting was a complete fiasco. It only lasted ten minutes. They met in a café close outside the works; as soon as Jean broached the subject of a job in the Gulf country, Elsie told her she could save her breath. It might be a good thing, she conceded, to start something in the Gulf country, but not for her. Wild horses would not drag her back again.

Jean came away from the café relieved in one way, and yet depressed. She would not have wanted anybody in that frame of mind, but she had been counting rather heavily on this unknown woman. She was very conscious of her own lack of managerial experience; as the venture became closer difficulties loomed up which had not been quite so obvious at the birth of the idea. She spent a depressed evening in the hotel, and flew back to Cairns next day in revolt at the long train journey; she found the air fare very little more expensive.

She found our letters waiting for her at the Strand Hotel when she got back there, and her spirits revived again. She remembered the gaunt, stern Aggie very well; if Aggie was prepared to come to Queensland for a year that really was something. I think she was beginning to feel very much alone and amongst strangers while she was waiting in Cairns for Joe Harman.

She wrote temporizing letters to us, for she would not make her mind up about anything until she had seen Harman. She told me later that the three weeks that she spent in Cairns living at the Strand Hotel after she came back from Rockhampton were the worst time of her life. Each morning she woke up in the cold light of dawn convinced that she was making a colossal fool of herself, that she could never settle down in this outlandish country, that she and Harman would have nothing in common and that it would be much better not to meet him at all. The wise course was to take the next plane down to Sydney and get a cheap passage to England, where she belonged. By noon some rough Australian kindness from a waitress or the manageress had sown a seed of doubt in the smooth bed of her resolution, that grew like a weed throughout the afternoon; by evening she knew that if she left that country and that place she would be running away from things that might be well worth having, things that she might never find again her whole life through. So she would go to bed resolved to be patient, and in the morning the whole cycle would start off again.

She knew the name of Harman's ship, of course, from my letters, and she had no difficulty in finding out when it docked at Brisbane. A few discreet inquiries showed her that he must pass through Cairns to get to Willstown, and convinced her that he would have to wait for several days in Cairns because his ship docked in Brisbane on a Monday and the weekly plane into the Gulf country left at dawn on Tuesday; he could never make that connection. She had found out in Willstown that he stayed at the Strand Hotel in Cairns, and so she waited there for him.

She wrote to him care of the shipping line at Brisbane, and she had some difficulty with that letter. Finally she said,

Dear Joe,

I got a letter from Mr Strachan telling me that you had been to see him while you were in England, and that you were sorry to have missed me. Funnily enough, I have been in Australia for some weeks, and I will wait at Cairns here so that we can have a talk before you go on to Willstown.

Don't let's talk too much about Malaya when we meet. We both know what happened; let's try and forget about it.

Will you let me know your movements—when you'll be coming up to Cairns? I do want to meet you again.

Yours sincerely,

Jean Paget

She got a telegram on Tuesday morning to tell her he was staying to see Mrs Spears, the owner of Midhurst, and he would be flying up to Cairns on Thursday. She went to meet him at the aerodrome, feeling absurdly like a girl of seventeen keeping her first date.

I think Joe Harman was in a position of some difficulty as the Dakota drew near to Cairns. For six years he had carried the image of this girl in his heart, but, in sober fact, he didn't in the least know what she looked like. The girl that he remembered had long black hair done in a pigtail down her back with the end tied up with a bit of string, like a Chinese woman. She was a very sunburnt girl, almost as brown as a Malay. She wore a tattered, faded, blouselike top part with a cheap cotton sarong underneath; she walked on bare feet which were very brown and usually dirty; and she habitually carried a baby on her hip. He did not really think that she would look like that at Cairns, and he was troubled and distressed by the fact that he probably wouldn't be able to recognize her again. It was unfortunate that the inner light in her, the quality that made her what he called a bonza girl, didn't show on the surface.

Something of his difficulty was apparent to Jean; she had wondered if he would know her while she was making herself pretty for him in her room, and had decided that he probably wouldn't. She had no such difficulty herself for he would have changed less than she, and anyway he carried stigmata upon his hands if there were any doubt. She stood waiting for him by the white rails bounding the tarmac as the Dakota taxied in in the hot sun.

She recognized him as he came out of the machine, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and broad-shouldered. He was looking anxiously about; his gaze fell on her, rested a minute, and passed on. She watched him, wondering if she was looking very old, and saw him start to walk towards the airline office with his curious, stiff gait. A little shaft of pain struck her; that was Kuantan, and it had left its mark on him. With her intellect she had known that this must be so, but seeing it for the first time was painful, all the same.

She left the rails, and walked quickly across the tarmac to him, and said,“Joe!”He stopped and stared at her incredulously. He had been looking for a stranger, but it was unbelievable to him that this smart, pretty girl in a light summer frock was the tragic, ragged figure that he had last seen on the road in Malaya, sunburnt, dirty, bullied by the Japanese soldiers, with blood upon her face where they had hit her, with blood upon her feet. Then he saw a characteristic turn of her head and memories came flooding back on him; it was Mrs Boong again, the Mrs Boong he had remembered all those years.

It was not in him to be able to express what he was feeling. He grinned a little sheepishly, and said,“Hullo, Miss Paget.”

She took his hand impulsively, and said,“Oh, Joe!”He pressed her hand and looked down into her eyes, and then he said,“Where are you staying? How long are you here for?”

She said,“I'm staying in the Strand Hotel.”

“Why, that's where I'm staying,”he said.“I always go there.”

“I know,”she said.“Mrs Smythe told me.”

There was much here that he did not understand, but first things came first.“Wait while I get my luggage,”he said.“We can drive in together.”

“I've got a taxi waiting,”she said.“Don't let's go in the bus.”

In the taxi as they drove into the town she asked him,“How was Mr Strachan, Joe?”

“He was fine,”he said.“I stayed with him quite a long time, in his flat.”

“Did you!”She had not known that part of it because I had not told her; I had told her the bare minimum about him since it was obvious that they were going to meet.“How long were you in England, Joe?”

“About three weeks.”

She did not ask him why he went because she knew that already, and it was hardly a matter to be entered on behind the taxi driver. He forestalled her, however, by asking,“What have you been doing in Australia, Miss Paget?”

She temporized.“Didn't you know I was here?”

He shook his head.“All I knew was what Mr Strachan said, that you were travelling in the East. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I got your letter at Brisbane. Oh my word, you could. Tell me, what are you doing in Cairns?”

A little smile played around her mouth.“What were you doing in England?”

He was silent, not knowing what to say to that. He had no lie ready. They were running through the outskirts of the town, past the churches.“We've got a good bit of explaining to do, Joe,”she said.“Let's leave it till you've got your room at the hotel, and then we'll find somewhere to talk.”

They sat in silence till they got to the hotel. Jean had a bedroom opening on to a veranda that looked out over the sea to the wild, jungle-covered hills behind Cape Grafton; they arranged to meet there when he had had a wash. She knew something of Australian habits by that time.“What about a beer or two?”she asked.

He grinned.“Good-oh.”

She asked Doris the waitress to get four beers, three for Joe and one for her; large quantities of cold liquid were necessary in that torrid place. It was symbolic of Australia, she felt, that they should hold their first sentimental conversation with the assistance of four bottles of beer.

She dragged two deckchairs into a patch of shade outside her room; the beer and Joe arrived about the same time. When the waitress had gone and they were alone, she said quietly,“Let me have a good look at you, Joe.”

He stood before her, examining her beauty; he had not dreamed when he had met her in Malaya that she was a girl like this.“You've not changed,”she said.“Does the back trouble you?”

“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'd 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.

“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 stood 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.”

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.”