A Town Like Alice (36 page)

Pete nodded. "I'll tell Phil."

"Tell him I'll be taking Bourneville with me, and I'll start as soon as I've run Miss Paget here back into town in the utility."

Forty miles in the utility in those wet conditions would take the best part of three hours. Jean said, "Joe, don't bother about me. I'll stay here till you come back. You get off at once."

He hesitated. "I may be away for days."

"Well then, I'll ride into town on Sally. One of the boongs can come with me and bring Sally back."

"You could do that," he said slowly. "Moonshine will be here, and he could go with you. I'll be taking Bourneville along with me."

"Well then," she said, "that's perfectly all right. What time's Dave coming back?"

"Should be back this afternoon," he said. He turned to Pete. "I've got Jim Lennon on holiday, and Dave's off visiting a girl, one of the nurses down at Normanton. But he'll be back today."

Jean said, "I'll stay here till Dave comes, in case anything crops up, Joe."

He smiled at her. "Well, that would be a help. I don't like leaving the place with just the boongs. I'll tell Moonshine he's to take you into town any time you want to go. He turned to Pete. "Want another horse?"

"I don't think so. 'Bout thirty miles to Windermere from here?"

"That's right. Cross over the river here, you know, and you'll find a track that leads there all the way. It's not been used much lately. If you miss it, go north to the Gilbert and follow up a mile or two and you'll find a little hut Jeff Pocock uses when he's hunting 'gators. There's a shallow about two miles up from that where you can get across. Go north from there about ten miles and you'll find their track from the homestead to Willstown. You can't mistake that."

"Okay."

"What about some tucker?"

The boy shook his head. "Think I'll get on my way."

They went down into the yard and saw him saddle up and ride away. The rain had practically stopped, but the clouds were heavy and black overhead. Joe turned to her, "Sorry about this," he said quietly. "It's spoilt our day. You're sure you don't mind riding in with Moonshine?"

"Of course not," she said. "You must get away at once."

She hurried in to galvanize Palmolive to prepare some lunch and food for them to take with them; down in the yard the men were saddling up. They took their riding horses and one packhorse with them, loaded with a tent and camping gear. She was distressed at the meagre quantity and poor quality of the food Joe seemed to think it necessary to take with them. He took a hunk of horrible black, overcooked meat out of the meat safe and dropped it into a sack with three loaves of bread; he took a couple of handfuls of tea in an old cocoa tin and a couple of handfuls of sugar in another. That was the whole of his provision for a journey of indefinite length. She did not interfere, seeing that he was absorbed in his preparations and not wanting to fuss him, but she stored up the knowledge for her future information.

He kissed her goodbye on the veranda and she went down with him to the yard. "Look after yourself, Joe," she said.

He grinned. "See you in Willstown next week." Then he was trotting out of the gate with Bourneville by his side and the packhorse behind on a lead, and she was left alone at Midhurst with the boongs.

It began to rain again, and she went up into the veranda. It was very quiet and empty now that Joe was gone, and Palmolive had retired to her own place. The rain made a steady drumming on the iron roof. It occurred to her that the whole business might be over. Don Curtis might have turned up at Windermere and Joe's journey might be so much wasted effort. It was absurd that Midhurst had not got a radio transmitter. It was true enough that they were only twenty miles from the hospital and so would hardly need it for their own accidents, but in a case like this it was both difficult and trying not to know what was going on. She made up her mind to have a transmitter at Midhurst when they were married. A cattle station without one in these days was a back number.

She had never been alone in Midhurst before. She wandered through from room to room, slowly, deep in thought, and the wallaby lolloped after her; from time to time she dropped her hand to caress it, and it nibbled her fingers. She spent a long time in his room, touching and fingering the rough gear and clothes that were essentially Joe. He had so few things. Yet it was in this room he had dreamed and planned that fantastic journey to England in search of her, that journey that had ended in Noel Strachan's office in Chancery Lane. Chancery Lane seemed very far away.

At about three o'clock Dave Hope arrived. He came riding from Willstown through the rain as Pete Fletcher had come in the morning; he had got a lift up on a truck from Normanton. He had heard all about the Windermere affair in Willstown, which he had left shortly before noon, and he could add further information from the radio. He told her that the Abo ringer, Samson, had returned to the homestead.

"Seems they were looking for some poddys," he said, "somewhere up at the Disappointment Creek end of the station. They separated and one went one way, one the other, for some reason; they left the camp standing and were going to meet back in the evening. Don didn't turn up that evening and of course the Abo couldn't track him in the dark. When the morning came the whole place was swimming in water, and he couldn't track him at all. That's how it seems to be."

They talked about it for some time on the veranda. Somewhere thirty or forty miles from them a man must be lying injured on the ground; he might be anywhere within a circle thirty miles in diameter. He might be lying under a bush and very probably by that time he would be unconscious; looking for him would be like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay.

"You'd better go and help, Dave," Jean said at last. "There's nothing to do here. I'll stay here and look after things."

He was a little doubtful. "What did Mr Harman say I was to do?"

"He didn't say anything. I said I'd stay here till you got back. He doesn't want the station left without anyone at all except the boongs. I'll stay here Dave, till somebody else comes. You go and join them over at Windermere. That's the best thing you can do."

"It certainly seems crook to stay here doing nothing," he admitted.

She got him off in the late afternoon with about two hours of daylight left. He knew Windermere station well, and was quite happy about finishing his journey in the dark. Left to herself, Jean went on with the plan of the kitchen she would have liked to see built, with a view to getting Joe to pull the old one down completely and start again from scratch. Presently Palm-olive came in and cooked eggs for her tea, and fed the various animals, and watered the veranda plants.

When Palmolive had gone away, she was alone in Midhurst for the night, with only the puppies and the wallaby for company. Somewhere out in the darkness and the rain Joe Harman would be pushing on towards the top end of the property, horses and men soaked through, picking their way cautiously through the darkness. She could do nothing to help them, nothing but sit and wait.

She learned a lot that evening. She learned a little of the fortitude that a wife on a cattle station must develop, even, she thought a little grimly, a wife with fifty-three thousand pounds. She learned that a radio transmitting and receiving set was almost indispensable to such a wife; even on that first evening she would have liked to exchange a word or two with Jackie Bacon in Cairns. She learned how much a lonely person turns to animals, and queerly the memory of Olive came into her mind, the brown Abo girl who could not bear to be separated from her kitten even on a visit to the Willstown hotel. By the time she went to bed she understood Olive a bit better.

She went to bed at about nine. There were one or two old British and American magazines about the place, tattered, much read stories about a different world. She took one of these and tried to read it in bed, but the fiction failed to satisfy her or to quell her anxieties. The rain stopped, and started, and then stopped again, and presently she slept.

She slept lightly and woke many times, and dozed again. She woke before dawn to the sound of a horse in the yard. She got up at once and put her frock on and went out on the veranda, and switched on the light, and called, "Who's that?"

A man came forward into the light at the foot of the steps, and said, 'It's me, Missy, Bourneville. Missa Hope, him come back?"

He spoke with a thick accent; she could not understand what he was saying. She said, "Come up here, Bourneville. What is it?"

He came up to her in the veranda. He was a man of about fifty years of age, very black, with a seamed, wrinkled face and greying hair. He said again, "Missa Hope, him come back?"

She understood this time. "He's gone over to Windermere. He came back here, and went on to Windermere. What's happened to Mr Harman, Bourneville?"

He said, "Missa Harman, him up top end. Him find Missa Curtis, him leg broken. Missa Harman, him send me back fetch Missa Hope, him drive utility up top end, bring Missa Curtis down."

She was angry with herself that she could not fully understand what he was saying. The fault lay within herself; a woman of the Gulf country would understand this man at once, and it was terribly important that she should understand. She said quietly, "I'm sorry, Bourneville. Say that again slowly."

She got it at the second repetition. "Mr Hope's not here," she said. "He's gone to Windermere."

He was silent for a time. Then he said, "No white feller here, drive utility?"

She shook her head. "Can you drive the utility, Bourneville?"

"No, Missy."

"Can any of the other Abos drive the utility?"

"No, Missy."

The thought came to her that she could drive it up to them herself, with Bourneville as a guide, but it was not a thing to be undertaken lightly. She had never owned a car, and though she had driven cars belonging to various young men from time to time and knew the movements, her total driving experience did not exceed five hours. Again, she was angry and humiliated by her own incompetence.

She lit a cigarette and thought deeply. It would benefit nobody if she attempted to drive the utility and crashed it. It was a very big vehicle, larger than any ordinary car and much bigger than anything she had ever driven before. The alternative would be to send Bourneville riding on to Willstown, perhaps to the police station; they would send a truck or a utility out with a driver who would go on to the top end. The return journey to Willstown was forty miles. It would mean at least six hours delay before the truck could arrive at Midhust ready to start for the top end.

She asked, "How far away is Mr Harman, Bourneville?"

He thought. "Four mile past bore."

Joe had once told her that the new bore was twenty-two miles from the homestead; that made the scene of the accident twenty-six miles away. She said, "What's the track like? Can the utility get there?"

"Him bonza track in dry far as bore," he said. She nodded; this was likely enough because the bore had only been made a few months and there must have been trucks going up to it. It would probably be possible to get along it even in this rain. Already the sky was getting grey; full daylight was not far away.

She asked, "Are there any creeks to cross?"

He held up three fingers. "Tree."

"Are they deep? Can the utility go through?"

"Yes, Missy. Creeks not too deep."

If Bourneville rode a horse beside the utility to guide her, she thought that she could make it. It was worth trying, anyway; the worst that could happen would be that she would get it stuck and have to send Bourneville back to Willstown with a note for them to send up somebody more competent. So long as he had his horse there was no risk of any great delay. She said, "All right, Bourneville, I'll drive the utility. You come up with me on your horse."

"Get fresh horse, Missy. Him tired."

"All right, get a fresh horse." Bourneville must be tired too, but she was too unaccustomed to these seamed black faces to be able to detect fatigue. "You get some tucker," she said. "I get tucker, too. We'll start in half an hour."

He went off and she put the kettle on for a cup of tea and then went and changed into her riding shirt and breeches. There was an old tin trunk in Joe's room which she had discovered the night before; it was half full of bandages and splints and various medicines. Being of tin, she thought, it would be waterproof, and she filled it up with blankets and some tins of food from the store cupboard, and a small sack of flour. That was all she could think of for provision in case she got stuck half way and had to spend a night or two in the utility.

She had a cup of tea and a small meal of meat and bread and jam; then she went down to the yard and examined the utility. The huge petrol tank had twenty gallons in it, and the sump was full of oil. She filled the radiator from the water-butt and filled the waterbag suspended from the lamp bracket. Then she sat in it; to her relief the gears were dearly marked. She switched it on and pressed the starter and jiggeted the accelerator, and was both alarmed and pleased when the engine started. Very gingerly she put it in reverse and drove it out into the yard.

They put the trunk into the back and started off, Bourneville riding ahead of her to show her the way. Partly because of Bourneville on his horse and partly because she thoroughly distrusted her own competence, she never got it into top gear all the way, and never exceeded ten miles an hour. She drove through each of the three creeks along the line that Bourneville showed her, following the agitated, plunging horse as he forced through the yellow water swirling about its legs. Once the water rose above the floorboards of the cab and she was very frightened. But she kept the utility going and the designer had anticipated such usage and had placed the ignition system above the cylinders, and it came through bounding from rock to rock with water pouring out of every hole and cranny.