A Town Like Alice (39 page)

He came in as slowly as he dared over the trees, missing them by no more than five feet, motoring in with careful graduations of the throttles. Over the cut trees he throttled back and stuffed her down towards the grass, hoping it was smooth. He could… he couldn't, he could never stop her in time. With wheels no more than two feet from the ground he jammed the throttles forward, held her level for a moment, and climbed away.

He turned to the orderly behind him as he circled low under the clouds, keeping the airstrip in sight. "Got a pencil and paper? Write this." He thought for a moment. "Sorry I can't make it. Strip must be about a hundred yards longer, or a hundred and fifty if you can manage it. I will come back at four o'clock this afternoon." They put this in a message bag with coloured streamers flying from it, and flew over, and dropped it on the middle of the strip.

Back at Willstown airfield he told them what had happened. "They've not had time to make it long enough," the sergeant said. "You'll find it'll be all right this afternoon." He drove the pilot in to the hotel and Al Burns took him to the bar, but the pilot would drink nothing but lemonade till the difficult flying of the afternoon was over.

He lunched at the hotel and strolled into the ice-cream parlour after lunch. It was new since he had last been in Willstown, and he stared around him with amused wonder. He ordered an ice; Rose Sawyer told him briskly to be quick and eat it, because she was shutting up. He asked if she closed every afternoon and was told that she was going up to see Miss Paget at the hospital. Then, of course, he heard all about her ride.

At four o'clock he was back over the airstrip at the top end of Midhurst; the rain had stopped and he was able to approach at about eight hundred feet. He circled once and had a good look; they had made the strip much longer and he would have no difficulty now. He came in and touched down at the near end; the Dragon bounced on the uneven ground and landed again, and rolled bumping and swaying to a standstill.

He stopped the engines and got out; they took a stretcher from the cabin and the orderly began the business of getting Don Curtis on to the stretcher and into the cabin, helped by the ringers. The pilot lit a cigarette and gave one to Joe Harman.

Joe asked, "Did you hear anything about Miss Paget, down in Willstown?"

The pilot said, "She's in the hospital. Nothing much wrong, they say, just tired and sore. She must be quite a girl."

Joe said, "Too right. If you see anyone from the hospital, leave a message for Miss Paget, will you? Tell her I'll be in town tomorrow afternoon."

"I'll do that," said the pilot. "I'll be staying there tonight. It's too late now to get to Cairns; I can't do night flying in this weather, not in this thing."

The loading was completed now. He got into his seat; the orderly swung the propellers and they taxied back to the far end of the track. It was short, but he could make it. He opened out and took off down the runway, and cleared the trees at the far end with about fifteen feet to spare. Half an hour later he was on the ground at Willstown, helping to transfer the stretcher to the truck that was to take Don Curtis to the hospital.

In hospital that afternoon Jean Paget showed Rose Sawyer the more accessible of her wounds, great chafed raw places six inches long. "Honourable scars," Rose said. "Pity you can't show them."

"It's because everything was so wet," Jean said. "But I'm going to have a proper pair of riding breeches made, I think. Ringers' strides are for ringers' skins."

"I'd never want to get up on a horse again if it'd done that to me."

"It's going to be some time before I can," said Jean.

Presently Rose said, "Tell me, Jean. Do you think there'd be any work up here for a contractor?"

Jean stared at her. "What sort of a contractor?"

"Making roads and things like that. Buildings, too."

"Is this Billy Wakeling, from Alice?"

Rose nodded. "He wrote me," she said carelessly. For the bunch of seven letters that arrived by the Dakota regularly every Wednesday, this seemed to Jean to be an understatement. "You know, his father's a contractor in Newcastle-he's got graders and bulldozers and steam shovels and all sorts of things like that. He started Billy off in Alice after the war because he said Alice was expanding and expanding places meant work for contractors. But Billy says he's fed up with Alice. He's coming up here for a visit as soon as the wet's over," she added artlessly.

"He won't get any roads or buildings to contract for here," Jean observed. "There's nobody to pay for them. I know what does want doing though. Joe Harman wants some little dams built up on Midhurst. I don't know if that's in his line."

"I should think it might be," said Rose slowly. "After all, it's shifting muck, and that's what Billy does. He'd do it with a bulldozer in the dry, wouldn't he?"

"I haven't the least idea," said Jean. "Can he get hold of a bulldozer?"

"His old man's got about forty down at Newcastle," Rose said. "I should think he could spare one for Billy."

"They're only little dams," said Jean.

"Well, everything's got to start. I don't think Billy expects a contract like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, not in the first year."

Jean asked, "Could you scoop out a hole for a swimming-pool with a bulldozer?"

"I should think so. Yes, I'm sure you could. I went out with him once and watched one working. He let me drive it; it was awful fun. You'd scoop it out first with a bulldozer and then you'd put up wooden stuff that they call shuttering and make the concrete sides."

"Could he do all that, too?"

"Oh, Billy can do that. Why, do you want a swimming-pool?"

Jean stared at the white painted wall. "It was just an idea. A nice, big pool just by the bore, with diving-boards and everything, big enough for everybody to get into and have fun. You see, you've got the water there, right in the main street. You'd have a wooden thing they call a cooling tower and run the water through that to cool it off before it went into the pool. Have a lawn of grass by it, where people could lie and sunbathe if they want to. An old man taking the cash at the gate, a bob a bathe…"

Rose stared at her. "You've got it all worked out. Are you thinking of doing that, Jean?"

"I don't know. It would be fun to have it, and I believe it’ll pay like anything. Mixed bathing, of course."

Rose laughed. "Have all the wowsers in the place looking over the rails to see what was going on."

"Charge them sixpence for that," said Jean. She turned to Rose. "Ask Billy to get hold of plans and things," she said, "and tell us what it would cost when he comes up after the wet. I don't believe that there's a swimming-pool in the whole Gulf country. It would be fun to have one."

"I'll ask him. Anything else?"

Jean stretched in her bed. "A nice hairdressing saloon and beauty parlour," she said, "with a pretty French brunette in it who really knew her stuff, and could make one look like Rita Hayworth. That's what I want, sometimes. But I don't think that's in Billy's line."

"It had better not be," said Rose.

Jean got up next day and left the hospital, and walked awkwardly to the workshop. There was an airmail letter from Mr Pack about the air freight consignment of shoes that he had received from them. His enthusiasm was temperate; he pointed out a number of defects and crudities which would require correction in production batches; most of these they were aware of and had attended to. He finished up by saying he would try and shift them, which, knowing Mr Pack, Jean and Aggie Topp interpreted as praise.

"He'll like the next lot better," Aggie said. And then she said, "I had two girls come along for jobs while you were away. One was Fred Dawson's daughter; he's the chief stockman or something on a station called Carlisle. She's fifteen; her mother brought her in. She's a bit young, but she'd be all right. The other was a girl of nineteen who's been working in the store at Normanton. I didn't like her so much."

"I don't want to take on anyone else until that first batch of shoes have been sold," said Jean. "If Mrs Dawson comes in again, tell her that we'll let her know about the kid after the wet. I'd like to have her if I can. I don't think we want the other one, do we?"

"I don't think so. Bit of a slut, she was."

They talked about the details of the business for an hour. "We haven't got the overalls back yet," said Aggie. "I went and saw Mrs Harrison, but her back's bad again. We'll have to find someone else." They issued the girls with a clean overall each week, to work in, and the washing of these overalls was something of a problem to them.

"What we want," said Jean, "is one of those Home Laundry things, and do them ourselves. We could run it off the generating set… Of course, it needs hot water." She thought for a minute. "Think about that one," she said. "Hire it out, do people's washing for them. Anyway, see if you can find another Mrs Harrison for the time being."

Aggie said, "Everybody's talking about your ride, Miss Paget."

"Are they?"

She nodded. "Even that girl from Normanton, she knew about it, too."

"How on earth did she get to hear?"

"It's these little wireless sets they have up on the cattle stations," Aggie said. "The boys here were telling me, they all listen in to what everybody else is saying-telegrams and everything. They've got nothing else to do. You can't keep anything secret in this country." And then she said, "I heard the aeroplane go off this morning. Was the man very bad?"

"Not too good," said Jean. "Sister thinks they'll be able to save the leg. We ought to have a doctor here, of course."

"There's not enough work to keep a doctor occupied in a place like this," said Aggie. "Where did they fly him to?"

"Cairns. There's a good hospital in Cairns." She turned to the door, and paused. "Aggie," she said, "how do you think a swimming-pool would go in Willstown? Would people use it?"

Joe Harman rode into the town that afternoon with Pete Fletcher. He put his horse into the stable behind the Australian Hotel and came to find Jean; he was wet and dirty in his riding clothes because the creeks were up, and though he had started spick and span from Midhurst as befits a man going in to town to see his girl, he had had to swim one of the two creeks on the way holding to the mane and saddle of his horse, which had rather spoilt the sartorial effect. He was half dry when he got to Willstown; he combed his hair and emptied out his boots, and went to the ice-cream parlour to ask Rose where Jean was.

He found her in her bedroom, writing a long letter to me. He tapped on the door and she came out to him. "We can't talk here, Joe. I'll never hear the last of it if you come in. Let's go and have an ice-cream in the parlour." It was borne in on her that this was literally the only place in Willstown where young men and young women could meet reputably to talk; the alternative, in the wet, would be to go into the stable or a barn. They picked a table by the wall; she looked around her at the rectangular walls and the adjacent tables with discontent. "This won't do at all," she said. "I'll have some sort of booths made, little corners where people can talk privately."

"What'll you have?" he asked.

"I'll have a banana split," she said. "I want feeding up. I don't know if you know it, but I've been very ill. Don't pay, Joe-have it on the house."

He grinned. "Think I'm the kind of man to take a girl out and let her shout?"

"If you're feeling like that, I'll have two. The bananas will be going bad by tomorrow." She was getting fruit flown in by the Dakota every Wednesday, and she had little difficulty in selling the small quantities she got at prices that would pay for the air freight. Her trouble was that usually she could not keep it for a week.

He came back with the ices and sat down with her. "Now Joe," she said, "what about that poddy corral?"

He grinned sheepishly, and looked over his shoulder. "That's crook," he said. "There's no poddy corral on Midhurst."

"There's something damn like one," she said, laughing. "Come clean, Joe. What happened to Don Curtis, anyway?"

"He was moseying about on my land where he hadn't got no right to be," Joe said carefully. "He found that corral where I'd got some poddys-my own poddys, mind you. I'd put 'em in there to consider things a bit, because they'd been wandering. Well, Don went to steal them off me, and he took down the top bar, but they were pretty wild, those poddys were; they hadn't had no water for about four days except the rain. Far as I can make out they pushed the second bar out on top of him when he went to loose it, and knocked him over on his back with the pole on top, and then they all ran over him and bust his leg. They ran out on the horse, too; Don had hitched his horse by the rein to something or other, and these poddys, they come charging down on to the horse and he bust the rein and he went too. So there Don was, and serve him bloody well right for going where he hadn't got no business to be."

"Whose poddys were they, really, Joe?"

"Mine," he replied firmly.

She smiled. "Where had they been wandering?"

He grinned. "Windermere. But they were my poddys. He pinched 'em off me. You heard me telling Pete he's got a poddy corral there."

"Were these poddys that you had in your corral the same ones that you let out of his corral?" she asked. It seemed to be getting just a little bit involved.