A Town Like Alice (30 page)

"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 anymore. 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’ll 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."