A Town Like Alice (21 page)

I got Marcus Fernie on the telephone that afternoon at his office at the BBC and asked if I could have a ticket for 'Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh'. I had to tell him something about Joe Harman in order to get it because there seemed to be considerable competition, and he came back at once with a demand that Harman should be interviewed for the programme 'In Town Tonight'. I said I'd see him about that, and he promised to send over the ticket. Then I got on to old Sir Dennis Frampton who has a herd of pedigree Herefords at his place down by Taunton and told him about Joe Harman, and he very kindly invited him down for a couple of nights.

I got back to my flat at about seven o'clock; I had arranged for dinner there. Joe Harman was there, and he had been to the Bank and the hotel, and he had brought his suitcase round to my spare room. I asked if he had found his father's house at Hammersmith.

"I found it," he said. "Oh my word, I did."

"Pretty bad?"

He grinned. "That's putting it mild. We got some slums in Australia, but nothing like that. Dad did all right for himself when he come away from that and out to Queensland."

I offered him a glass of sherry, but he preferred a beer; I went and got him a bottle. "When did your father leave this country?" I inquired,

"1904," he said. "He went out to the Curry, to Cobb and Co. They used to run the stage coaches, before motors came. He must have been about fifteen then. He fought in the first war with the Aussies at Gallipoli."

"He's dead now, is he?"

"Aye," he said. "He died in 1940, soon after I joined the army." He paused. "Mother's still alive. She lives with my sister Amy at the Curry."

"Tell me," I said, "do you know a place called Hall's Creek?"

"Where the gold was? Over by Wyndham, in West Australia?"

"That will be the place," I said. "There are gold mines there, are there?"

"I don't think they work it now," he said. "There was a lot of gold there in the nineties, like in Queensland, in the Gulf country. I've never been to Hall's Creek, but I've always thought that it would be like Croydon. There was a lot of gold at Croydon, oh my word. It lasted for about ten years, and then they had to go so deep for it, it didn't pay any longer. Croydon had thirty thousand people one time, so they say. Now it's got two hundred. It's the same at Normanton and Burketown-Willstown's the same. All gold towns at one time, they were."

"You never heard of anybody called Macfadden over at Hall's Creek, did you?"

He shook his head. "I never heard the name."

I told him I was getting a ticket for 'Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh', and that they wanted him to broadcast on Saturday night. He agreed diffidently to do this; when the time came I listened in and thought he did it surprisingly well. The announcer shepherded him along quite skilfully, and Harman spoke for about six or seven minutes about the Midhurst cattle station and the country down below the Gulf of Carpentaria that he called the Gulf country. Marcus Fernie took the trouble to ring me up next day to tell me how well it had gone. "I only wish we could get more chaps like him now and then," he said. "It makes a difference when you hear the real McCoy."

I put him on the train on Sunday down to Taunton to see Sir Dennis Frampton's cows. He had not much time left, because a ship of the Shaw Savill line was leaving on the following Friday morning for New Zealand and Australia, and I had managed to get him a cheap berth on that. He came back on the Wednesday full of what he had seen. "He's got a bonza herd there, oh my word," he said. "I learned more about raising up the quality of stock there in two days than I'd have learned in ten years in the Gulf country. Of course, you couldn't do the things that he does on a station like Midhurst, but I got plenty to think about."

"You mean about breeding?"

"We don't breed for quality at all in the Gulf," he said. "Not like you set about it here in England. All we do is go out and shoot the scrub bulls when you see them so you keep the best ones breeding. I'd like to see a herd of pedigree stock out there, like he's got. I never see such beasts outside a show."

After dinner I had a word with him about Miss Paget. "I shall write to her in a day or two and give her your address," I said. "I know that she'll be very sorry to have missed you, and I should think you'd find a letter from her waiting for you at Midhurst when you get there. In fact, I know you will, because I shall write air mail, and she's certain to write air mail to you."

He brightened considerably at the thought. "I don't think I'll write to her from here," he said. "If you're going to do that I'll wait and write when I hear from her. I'm glad I didn't meet her over here, in a way. It's probably all turning out for the best."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him then that she was in Australia, but I refrained. I had written to her in Alice Springs the day before Joe Harman had come to me, and I was expecting a letter from her any day now, because she used to write once a week, very regularly. If necessary, I could cable her to tell her his address in order that she might not leave Australia without seeing him, but there was no reason to lay all her cards before him at this stage.

I saw him off at the docks two days later, as I had seen Jean Paget a few months before. As I turned to go down the gangway he said gruffly, "Thank you for doing so much for me, Mr Strachan. I'll be writing from Midhurst." And he shook my hand with a grip mat made me wince, for all the injury his hand had suffered.

I turned to go down the gangway. "That's all right, Joe. You'll find a letter from Miss Paget when you get back home. You might even find more than that."

I had reason for that last remark, because I had a letter from her in my pocket that had come by that day's post, and it was postmarked Willstown.

Chapter 6

When Jean Paget stepped down the gangway from the Constellation on to Darwin airport she was wildly and unreasonably happy. It is a fact, I think, that till that time she had never really recovered from the war. She had come to England when she was repatriated and she had done her job efficiently and well with Pack and Levy for two years or so, but she had done it in the manner of a woman of fifty. She lived, but she had very little zest for life. Deep in the background of her mind remained the tragedy of Kuantan, killing her youth. She had only been speaking the truth when she had told me once that she felt about seventy years old.

She landed at about eight-fifteen at night, after dark; as she was getting off the plane at Darwin, Qantas had booked a room for her at the Darwin Hotel. She stepped on to the concrete and was marshalled to the Customs office in the hangar; at the foot of the gangway there were three young men who scrutinized her carefully. At the time she took them for officials of the airport. It was only later that she found out that they were reporters on the staff of various Australian newspapers engaged in what must surely be the worst assignment in all journalism, meeting every aeroplane that lands on Darwin airport in the hope of finding a Prime Minister on board, or a woman with two heads.

One of them came up to her as soon as she was through the Customs; there had been nothing to make a story in this load of passengers. A happy-looking girl was a small dividend, however. He said, "Miss Paget? The stewardess tells me that you're getting off here and you're staying at the Darwin Hotel. Can I give you a lift into town? My name is Stuart Hopkinson; I represent the
Sydney Monitor
up here."

She said, "That's terribly kind of you, Mr Hopkinson. I don't want to take you out of your way, though."

He said, "I'm staying there myself." He had a small Vauxhall parked outside the hangar; he took her suitcase and put it in the back seat and they got in, chatting about the Constellation and the journey from Singapore. And presently, as they drove past the remains of Vestey's meatworks, he said, "You're English, aren't you, Miss Paget?" She agreed. "Would you like to tell me why you're visiting Australia?"

She laughed. "Not very much, Mr Hopkinson. It's only something personal-it wouldn't make a story. Is this where I get out and walk?"

"You don't have to do that," he said. "It was just a thought. I haven't filed a story for a week."

"Would it help if I said that I thought Darwin was just wonderful? 'London Typist thinks Darwin wonderful'?"

"We can't go panning London, not in the
Monitor.
Is that what you are, a typist?" She nodded. "Come out to get married?"

"I don't think so."

He sighed. "I'm afraid you're not much good to me for a story."

"Tell me, Mr Hopkinson," she said, "how do the buses go from here to Alice Springs? I want to go down there, and I haven't got much money, so I thought I'd go by bus. That's possible, isn't it?"

"Sure," he said. "One went this morning. You'll have to wait till Monday now; they don't run over the weekend."

"How long does it take?"

"Two days. You start on Monday, stop at Daly Waters Monday night, and get in late on Tuesday. It's not too bad a journey, but it can be hot, you know."

He put her down at the hotel and carried her bag into the lobby for her. She was lucky in that overcrowded place to get a room to herself, a room with a balcony overlooking the harbour. It was hot in Darwin, with a damp enervating heat that brought her out in streams of perspiration at the slightest movement. This was no novelty to her because she was accustomed to the tropics; she bolted the door and took off her clothes and had a shower, and washed some things in the hand basin, and lay down to sleep with a bare minimum of covering.

She woke early next morning and lay for some time in the cool of the dawn considering her position. It was imperative to her that she should find Joe Harman and talk to him; at the same time the meeting with Mr Hopkinson had warned her that there were certain difficulties ahead. However pleasant these young men might be, their duty was to get a story for the paper, and she had no desire whatever to figure in the headlines, as she certainly would do if the truth of her intentions became known. 'Girl flies from Britain to seek soldier crucified for her…' It would be far easier if she were a man. However, she wasn't.

She set to work to invent a story for herself, and finally decided that she was going out to Adelaide to stay with her sister who was married to a man called Holmes who worked in the Post Office; that seemed a fairly safe one. She was travelling by way of Darwin and Alice Springs because a second cousin called Joe Harman was supposed to be working there but hadn't written home for nine years, and her uncle wanted to know if he was still alive. From Alice she would take the train down to Adelaide.

It didn't quite explain why she had come to Darwin in a Constellation, except that there is no other way to get to Darwin. Lying on her bed and cogitating this it seemed a pretty waterproof tale; when she got up and went downstairs for breakfast she decided to try it out on Stuart Hopkinson. She got her chance that morning as he showed her the way to the bus booking-office; she let it out in little artistic snippets over half an hour of conversation, and the representative of the
Sydney Monitor
swallowed it without question so that she became a little ashamed of herself.

He took her into a milk bar and stood her a Coca-Cola. "Joe Harman…" he said. "What was he doing at Alice nine years ago?"

She sucked her straw. "He was a cowboy on a cattle farm," she said innocently, and hoped she wasn't overdoing it.

"A stockman? Do you remember the name of the station?"

"Wollara," she said. "That's the name, Wollara. That's near Alice Springs, isn't it?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'll try and find out."

He came back to her after lunch with Hal Porter of the
Adelaide Herald.
"Wollara's a good long way from Alice Springs," said Mr Porter. "The homestead must be nearly a hundred and twenty miles away. You mean Tommy Duveen's place?"

"I think that's it," she said. "Is there a bus there from Alice Springs?"

"There's no bus or any way of getting there except to drive there in a truck or a utility."

Hopkinson said. "It's on one of Eddie Maclean's rounds, isn't it?"

"Now you mention it, I think it is." Porter turned to Jean. "Maclean Airways run around most of those stations once a week, delivering the mail," he said. "You may find that you could get there by plane. If so, that's much the easiest."

Her ideas about reporters had been moulded by the cinema; it was a surprise to her to find that in real life they could be kind and helpful people with good manners. She thanked them with sincere gratitude, and they took her out for a run round Darwin in a car. She exclaimed at the marvellous, white sand beaches and the azure blue of the sea, and suggested that a bathing party might be a good thing.

"There's one or two objections," Mr Porter said. "One is the sharks. They'll take you if you go out more than knee deep. Another is the alligators. Then there's the stone fish-he lies on the beach and looks just like a stone until you tread on him, and he squirts about a pint of poison into you. The Portuguese Men-o'-War aren't so good, either. But the thing that really puts me off is Coral Ear."

"What's that?"

"A sort of growth inside your head that comes from getting this fine coral sand into your ear."

Jean came to the conclusion that perhaps she wouldn't bathe in Darwin after all.

She got her bathe, however, because on Sunday they drove her forty miles or so southwards down the one road to a place called Berry Springs, a deep water hole in a river where the bathing was good. The reporters eyed her curiously when she appeared in her two-piece costume because the weeks that she had spent in native clothes in Kuala Telang had left her body tanned with sunburn in unusual places. It was the first mistake that she had made, and for the first time a dim suspicion crossed their minds that this girl held a story for them if they could only get it out of her.

"Joe Harman…" said Hal Porter thoughtfully to Stuart Hopkinson. "I'm sure I've heard that name before somewhere, but I can't place it."

As they drove back from the bathe the reporters told her about Darwin, and the picture they painted was a gloomy one. "Everything that happens here goes crook," Hal Porter said. "The meat works has been closed for years because of labour troubles-they got so many strikes they had to close it down. The railway was intended to go south to Alice and join up with the one from Alice down to Adelaide-go from north to south of the continent. It might have been some good if it had done that, but it got as far as Birdum and then stopped. God knows what it does now. This road has just about put the railway out of business-what business it ever had. There used to be an ice factory, but that's closed down." He paused. "Everywhere you go round here you'll see ruins of things that have been tried and failed."

"Why is that?" Jean asked. 'It's not a bad place, this. It's got a marvellous harbour."

"Of course it has. It ought to be a great big port, this place-a port like Singapore. It's the only town of any size at all on the north coast. I don't know. I've been up here too long. It gives me the willies."

Stuart Hopkinson said cynically, "It's got outbackitis." He smiled at Jean. "You'll see a lot of this in Australia, specially in the north."

She asked, "Is Alice Springs like this?" It was so very different from the glowing recollections of Alice that Joe Harman had poured out to her, six years before.

"Oh, well," said Hopkinson, "Alice is different. Alice is all right."

"Why is it different?" she asked.

"I don't really know. It's railhead, of course, for trucking cattle down to Adelaide-that's one thing. But it's a go-ahead place is Alice; all sorts of things go on there. I wish to God the
Monitor’d
send me there instead of here."

She said goodbye to her two friends that night, and started at dawn next morning in the bus for Alice Springs. The bus was a big, modern Bedford, heavily streamlined; it towed a trailer carrying goods and luggage. It was comfortable enough although not air-conditioned; it cruised down the wide, empty tarmac road at fifty miles an hour, hour after hour, manned by ex-naval crew.

As far as Katherine, where the bus stopped for lunch, the country was well wooded with rather stunted eucalyptus trees, which Jean discovered were called gums. Between these trees were open meadows of wild land, ungrazed, unused, and uninhabited. She discussed this country with a fellow traveller, a bank inspector on his way to Tennant Creek, and she was told that all this coastal belt was useless for farming for some reason that she could not understand. After Katherine the country gradually became more arid, the trees more scattered and desiccated, till by the evening they were running through a country that was near to desert.

At dusk they stopped for the night at a place called Daly Waters. Daly Waters, she discovered, was a hotel, a post office, a large aerodrome, and nothing else whatsoever. The hotel was a rambling collection of single-storey wooden huts or dormitories for men and for women, strange to Jean but comfortable enough. She strolled outside before tea, in the dusk, and looked around. In front of the hotel three young men were squatting on their heels with one leg extended in the peculiar attitude that Joe Harman had used; they wore a sort of jodhpur trouser and elastic-sided boots with a very thin sole, and they were playing cards upon the ground, intent upon their game. She realized that she was looking at her first ringers.

She studied them with interest; that was how Joe Harman would have looked before he joined the army. She resisted an absurd temptation to go up to one of them and ask if they knew anything about him.

The bus started at dawn next day, and drove on southwards down the tarmac road, past Milners Lagoon and Newcastle Waters and Muckety Bore to Tennant Creek. As they went the vegetation grew sparser and the sun grew hotter, till by the time they stopped at Tennant Creek for a meal and a rest the country had become pure sand desert. They went on after an hour, driving at fifty to fifty-five miles an hour down tyre scorching road past tiny places of two or three houses dignified with a name, Wauchope and Barrow Creek and Aileron. Toward evening they found themselves running towards the Macdonnell Ranges, lines of bare red hills against the pale blue sky, and at about dusk they ran slowly into Alice Springs and drew up at the Talbot Arms Hotel.

Jean went into the hotel and got a room opening on to a balcony, the hotel being a bungalow-type building with a single storey, like practically every other building in Alice Springs. Tea was served immediately after they arrived, and she had already learned that in Australian country hotels unless you are punctual for your meals you will get nothing. She changed her dress and strolled out in the town after tea, walking very slowly down the broad suburban roads, examining the town.

She found it as Joe Harman had described it to her, a pleasant place with plenty of young people in it. In spite of its tropical surroundings and the bungalow nature of the houses there was a faint suggestion of an English suburb in Alice Springs which made her feel at home. There were the houses standing each in a small garden fenced around or bordered by a hedge for privacy; the streets were laid out in the way of English streets with shade trees planted along the kerbs. Shutting her eyes to the Macdonnell Ranges, she could almost imagine she was back in Bassett as a child. She could now see well what everybody meant by saying Alice was a bonza place. She knew that she could build a happy life for herself in this town, living in one of these suburban houses, with two or three children, perhaps.