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Chapter 8

They spent that day in a curious mixture of love-making and economic discussion.“You can't tell me that a country with three times the rainfall of the Territory can't support a town as good as Alice,”she said once.“I know Alice has a railway. Willstown's got rain, and I know which I'd rather have for raising cattle. If you go on doing that, Joe, I'll go off and sit by myself. We aren't married yet.”She removed his hand and kissed it.

“Rain's not the only thing you want for raising cattle,”he said.“The better the feed, of course, the more calves live through the dry and the more you've got to sell. But there's a lot more to it than that, oh my word.”

“Tell me, Joe.”She had his hand in a firm grip.

“One thing,”he said,“you've got to keep that water when you've got it. It's true that Midhurst gets a lot of rainfall, but it's all gone in a flash. We get rain from the middle of December till the end of February, and you'll see the creeks all running full in flood. But three weeks later, by the end of March, they'll be all dry again, and the country as dry as ever.”

“Is that what you want to build the dams for, at Kangaroo Creek and Dry Gum Creek?”

“That's right,”he said.“I want to make a start with building little kind of barrages to hold back the water. Do a bit each year, starting at the head of each creek and working down. Get a little pool held back every two or three miles all down the creeks till they run out into the Gilbert. They wouldn't hold the water right through the dry, of course; the sun's too strong. But you could add a lot of feed to Midhurst if you had a lot of little dams like that. Oh my word, you could.”

She released his hand.“How big is Midhurst, Joe?”

“Eleven hundred square miles.”

“How many cattle does it carry?”

“About nine thousand. Ought to carry more than that, but it's dry up at the top end. Very dry.”

“Suppose you could get all the little dams that you're imagining. How many would it carry then?”

He thought for a minute.“I don't see why it shouldn't carry double what's on it now. That'ld be about sixteen to the mile. With a rainfall like we've got you should be able to do that.”

“You sold fourteen hundred head this year, didn't you?”

“That's right.”

“How much a head?”

“Four pound sixteen.”

She grabbed his hand again, and held it imprisoned.“I'm trying to think, Joe. If you doubled the stock on the station you'd have another fourteen hundred to sell each year. That's—that's between six and seven thousand pounds a year more to sell. You'd be selling twelve or thirteen thousand pounds worth every year then, Joe. It'ld be worth spending a bit of capital on dams to get that rise in turnover, wouldn't it?”

He looked at her with a new respect.“Well, that's the way I worked it out. I told Mrs Spears, I said, I want to keep a permanent gang of three men and a few Abos on this. Do a bit each year, working down from the top. Spend about fifteen hundred a year, you might say. There'd be less profit the first year, but after that it should rise steadily to nearly double. That's what I told her.”

“She agreed, did she?”

“She's agreed to spend the money. But that's only the start of it, the easy part. It may be years before I get the men.”

She looked at him incredulously.“Years?”

“Too right,”he said heavily.“It's all very well to think of things like that, but it's another thing to do them. Might be five years before I get the work in hand. You see, there's only three of us on Midhurst—whites, that is—me and Jim Lennon, and Dave Hope. We've got to find three more who'll work out all the week up-country, forty miles from the homestead, working with a pick and shovel mostly, and responsible enough to get on by themselves with only just a visit once a week or once a fortnight. Well, you can't get men like that. There are fewer people in the Gulf country every year. If it wasn't for the Abo stockmen, the boongs, I don't know what we'd do.”

“Are there really only three of you—whites—running Midhurst?”

He put his arm around her shoulders.“When you come it'll be four.”

She thought it would be five or six soon after that, but she refrained from saying so.“How many would you like to have?”

“You mean with eighteen thousand head of cattle, some time in the future?”She nodded.“I could use twenty on a station like that,”he said.“That wouldn't be too many, not if you were running tame bulls in a paddock, to improve the stock. There'd be fences and stockyards and all sorts of things to make. I could use twenty white ringers, and some other hands besides.”

She said slowly,“Pete Fletcher said that there were fifty ringers coming into Willstown, using it as their town.”

“That's about right,”he said.

“If all the stations developed like you say,”she observed,“that means seven times as many ringers, because there are only three of you now. Three or four hundred ringers in the district, all with wives and families, and shops for them, and pubs, and garages, and radio, and cinemas. There's room here for a town of two or three thousand people, Joe.”

He smiled.“You'll be making it as big as Brisbane next.”

She said severely,“Joe. There was an old girl in our party in Malaya called Mrs Frith. She thought you must be Jesus Christ, because you'd been crucified. I tried to tell her that you weren't. If she saw what you're doing now she'd probably believe me.”

They talked about Mrs Frith for a time, and then reverted to more mundane matters.“Joe,”she said,“listen to me. Would you think it very stupid if I said I wanted to start a business in Willstown?”

He stared at her.“A business? What sort of business could you do in Willstown?”

“Do you know what I was doing in England?”she inquired.

“Shorthand typing, wasn't it?”he asked.

She took his hand and smoothed it between her own.“There's such a lot that you don't know about me,”she said.“So much to tell you.”She started in to tell him about Pack and Levy, and Mr Pack, and about alligator-skin shoes, and Aggie Topp. Half an hour later she said,“That's what I want to do, Joe. Do you think it's crazy?”

“I don't know.”And then, quite unexpectedly, he said,“I took a walk down Bond Street, looking in the shops.”

She turned to him, surprised.“Did you, Joe?”

He nodded.“I asked Mr Strachan what I ought to see in London and he asked me how much history I knew and I told him that I never got much schooling. So then he said to go and see St Paul's and Westminster Abbey, and then he said to take the bus to Piccadilly Circus and walk up Regent Street and along Oxford Street and down Bond Street and back along Piccadilly; he said I'd see all the best shops that way.”

She nodded. It seemed very far away from Green Island, and the whisper of the coconut palms overhead in the sea breeze.

“I saw a lot of alligator-skin shoes,”he said.“Sort of dressing-cases, too.”He turned to her.“It was interesting seeing those, and wondering if they were skins that old Jeff Pocock trapped. Made me feel quite at home. Beautifully done up, they were. But the prices—oh my word. Most of them hadn't got no labels, but there was one, just a little alligator-skin case with silvery things in it, for a lady. A hundred guineas, that one was.”

She was excited.“Joe, I bet that was made by Pack and Levy. We did all that sort of work.”

“You weren't thinking you could make that sort of stuff in Willstown?”

“Not cases, Joe. Just shoes—shoes to start with, anyway. A little workshop with six or seven girls making alligator-skin shoes. It won't cost very much, Joe—not more than I can afford to lose if it goes wrong. But I don't know—perhaps it won't go wrong. If it worked out all right, and if it paid, it'ld be a good thing for the town.”

“Six or seven girls all earning money at a job in Willstown?”he said thoughtfully.“You wouldn't keep them six weeks. They'd all be married—oh my word, they would.”

She laughed.“Then I'd have to find six or seven more.”She got up.“Let's go and bathe. It'll be too hot if we don't bathe soon.”

They went and changed and lay in the clean, silvery water on the coral sand.“Look at those bruises,”she said.“You great bully. Hit somebody your own size.”And presently she said,“I've got another shock for you. You won't drown if I tell you now? I want to start an ice-cream parlour.”

“Oh my word.”

“I'm going to pay these girls a lot of money, Joe,”she said seriously.“I've got to get some of it back.”

He looked at her, uncertain if she were laughing or not.“An ice-cream parlour in Willstown?”he said.“It'll never pay.”

“You wait till you see what I charge for an ice-cream,”she said.“Not only ice-cream, Joe—fruit and vegetables, quick frozen stuff, and women's magazines, and cosmetics, and all the little bits of things that women want. I've got a very pretty girl who wants to come and run it for me, a girl called Rose Sawyer who lives in Alice Springs.”

He said slowly,“If you've got a girl like that to run it, the women won't be able to get in the shop. It'll be full of ringers.”

“That's all right,”she said,“so long as they buy ice-cream.”She turned to him.“Joe, did you ever spend a Sunday in Alice Springs?”

He shook his head.“I don't think I ever did. Not since before the war, anyway.”

“I know why that is, too,”she said.“The pubs are shut.”

He grinned.“Too right.”

“The pub's shut in Willstown, too, on Sundays.”

“The bar's shut,”he said.“You can usually get it out of Ma Connor, round the back.”

She rolled over in the water.“I'll have to tip off Sergeant Haines, Joe. Sunday's the best day of all for the ice-cream parlour at Alice. All the men who are in the bar all the week come along with their wives and kids on Sunday to the ice-cream parlour and put down ice-cream sodas and Coca-Cola. That place does a roaring trade on Sundays.”

“It would,”he said thoughtfully.“There'd be nothing else to do.”

They got out of the sea presently and went and sat in the shade; he would not let her stay in long for fear of sunburn. When they were smoking together under the trees, he said,“It's going to cost a hell of a lot of money, all this you want to do. Three or four thousand pounds, I'd say, or more than that.”

“I've got enough,”she said.

He turned to her.“Mr Strachan told me you were a wealthy woman,”he said quietly.“It worried me, that did, till I got used to the idea. How much have you got? Don't tell me if you'd rather not say, but if I knew about how much I'd be able to help you more.”

“Of course,”she said. Nothing would come between them now, after last night.“Mr Strachan says I've got about fifty-three thousand pounds. It's all in trust for me until I'm thirty-five, though. If I want to spend capital before then, I've got to ask him.”

“Oh my word.”

“It is a lot of money, isn't it?”she said.“I'm glad that it's in trust for me in a way, because I wouldn't in the least know what to do with it. And Noel has been such a dear.”She paused.“I want to do something useful with it,”she said.“I don't know anything about real business. The only thing I know about at all is what Pack and Levy made. I thought if we could start a little workshop of that sort, and a shop where women could get things they like—well, even if it didn't pay very well, it'll be using money the way money ought to be used, in places like Willstown.”

He bent and kissed her.“There's another thing, Joe,”she said.“I don't know, but I've got a sort of feeling that there's more to it than just employing a few girls. You say the ringers are all leaving the Gulf country, and men won't come to the outback. Well, of course they won't if they can't get a girl. And all the girls go because they can't get a job. For every girl I make a job for, I believe you'll get a man to work at Midhurst. Don't you think that's true?”

“I don't know.”He stared out over the sea to the dim blue line of the Tableland.“It'ld certainly help to have a flock of girls around. It can be lonely in the outback, oh my word.”

A poignant realization of the solitude struck her. The long nights alone in the homestead, when ‘you couldn't get along in the outback without dogs’. The sensitive, intelligent face of the manager of Carlisle, Eddie Page, who had married his illiterate, inarticulate lubra. She turned to him with quick understanding and sympathy.“I feel an awful pig asking you to wait,”she said. He took her hand and squeezed it.“I do want to try and start this business before we get married, Joe,”she said. She smiled at him.“You know, you're a pretty energetic lover. I don't believe you'll waste much time starting a family.”

He grinned,“I won't go quicker than you want to.”

“I want to have them, too.”She pulled his head down to her and kissed him.“But that means I'll only have six months for business after we get married, and then I'll have to begin thinking of other things. Joe, when do you start mustering?”

“After the wet,”he said.“It was March this year because of the late season, but normally we'd start mustering about the middle of February.”

“How long does the muster go on for?”

“About three weeks or a month. After that there's the branding of the calves, and driving the stock down to Julia Creek.”

“Could we get married after the mustering, Joe? Say early in April?”

“Of course.”

She said thoughtfully,“That would mean that I'd have nearly a year from now, to get it to the stage when I could leave the business for a month or two while we start your family. I think that's fair enough. If it couldn't run without me for a month by then the whole thing wouldn't be much good, and we'd better pack it up.”

He said,“I'll be around, of course.”

She laughed.“Handing out ice-creams and selling lipsticks to young girls. I won't ask you to do that, Joe.”

He thought about this programme.“Jim could drive the steers alone down to Julia Creek,”he said,“while we're getting married. I'd send Bourneville and some of the other boongs with him. Then we could drive down in the utility and catch him up about the time he got there, and put them on the train. Have it as a kind of honeymoon.”

She smiled.“I like your idea of a honeymoon.”He grinned.“Is there anything to do in Julia Creek, Joe, except drink beer?”

“Oh my word,”he said.“There's plenty to do in Julia Creek.”

“What is there to do there?”

“Put fifteen hundred cattle into railway trucks.”He grinned at her.“There's not many English girls get a chance of a honeymoon like that,”he said.

They went and changed for lunch, and over lunch he said,“About this tanning and dressing the alligator skins. I'd give that away.”He was very much against attempting to do that in Willstown; it was messy work, unsuitable for girls, and no men were available to do it. He told her that there was a tannery in Cairns who could dress any skins she sent them.“A joker called Gordon runs it,”he said.“He was over in the Gulf country last year. We could go and see him tomorrow afternoon if you like.”

“Would he have any white kid basils, do you think?”

“Might do. If not he'll probably get them.”

With his knowledge of station management he was a great help to her with suggestions for the workshop.“I'd make it good and big, while you're at it,”he said.“It's the transport of the wood to Willstown that's going to cost the money.”He thought for a minute.“There's three of you new girls coming in to live in Willstown, if all goes right,”he said.“You and this Rose Sawyer and this Aggie Topp. Why don't you make your workshop building a bit bigger and have three bed-sitting-rooms at the end, walled off from the rest of it and with a separate entrance? Then you wouldn't have to live in the hotel and you'd be all comfortable by yourselves. Then if the business grows up you can pull down the wall and throw it all into one.”This seemed to her to be a very good idea indeed.

They got a paper and pencil after lunch and jotted down a few essential things to do in Cairns when they got back there, and orders to be placed. Then they retired to their own huts and slept in the heat of the day. She was roused by Joe calling her outside her hut.“Come on and bathe,”he was saying.“It's nearly five o'clock.”

She pulled the sheet over quickly.“I won't be a minute. Have you been looking in?”

“I wouldn't do a thing like that.”

“I wish I could believe you.”She pulled the curtain across and put on her bathing dress, and joined him on the beach. And lying with him in the warm blue and silvery water on the sand, she said,“Joe, do you want us to be engaged, with a ring and everything?”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

She shook her head.“Not unless it would prevent you worrying. I'll marry you early in April, Joe —that's dinkum.”He smiled.“But for the present, I believe we'd get on better if we weren't officially engaged.”She turned to him.“You see, when we get back to Willstown I'll be doing some pretty odd things, things that Willstown people will think crazy. Some of them may be, because there'll probably be some mistakes. I don't want you to have to be mixed up in it, just because we're engaged. You've got a position to keep up.”

“Wouldn't it help if people thought I was with you in whatever you're doing?”

She smiled, and rolled over and kissed him.“You're all salt. It wouldn't help if you get in a fight every Saturday night in the bar because somebody says something rude about your fiancée.”He grinned.“They will, you know. They're bound to think I'm crackers.”

They got out of the water presently and sat in the shade of the trees, talking and talking about the future.“Joe,”she said once,“what do I do if a boong comes into the ice-cream parlour and wants a soda? A boong stockrider? Do I serve him in the same place, or has he got to have a different shop?”

He scratched his head.“I dunno that it's ever happened in Willstown. They go into Bill Duncan's store. I don't think you could serve them in an ice-cream parlour, with a white girl behind the counter.”

She said firmly,“Then I'll have to have another parlour for them with a black girl in it. There's such a lot of them, Joe—we can't cut them out. We'll have two parlours, with the freezes and the kitchen between.”She drew a little diagram on the white sand with her forefinger.“Like this.”

“Oh my word,”he said.“You're going to start some talk in Willstown.”

She nodded.“I know. That's why I don't want us to be engaged till just before we're married.”

In the evening as they kissed goodnight between their bedroom huts, she said,“We won't be able to do this in Willstown. I'll remember this Green Island all my life, Joe.”

He grinned.“Come back here in April, if you like. Before Julia Creek.”

They left next morning, when Eddie came for them with his motorboat, and landed at Cairns early in the afternoon. They took their bags to the hotel, and then went straight to see Mr Gordon at the tannery, and spent an hour with him discussing alligator skins and other shoe materials. He advised them to dismiss the idea of kid for linings.“Anything that can be done with kid we'll do for you with wallaby,”he said.“You've got any amount of wallaby out there, and it's as good as kid— texture, appearance, bleaching, glazing—anything you like.”Harman arranged to send him half a dozen skins for sample treatment by the next lorry.“Be a good thing to keep down some of these wallabies,”he said.“They eat an awful lot of feed out on the station. Too many of them altogether.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and ordering, and got back to the hotel at dusk, tired out, having booked their passages to Willstown upon the morning plane. Jean said,“There's one thing I must do tonight, Joe, before leaving Cairns. I must write to Noel Strachan and tell him what's happened.”

In the warm scented night of early summer by the Queensland sea, she sat down on the veranda after tea and wrote me a long letter. Joe Harman sat beside her as she wrote, smoking quietly, at peace.

She was very good about writing, and she still is; she still writes every week. I got that letter early in November; I remember it so well. It was a foggy, dark morning with a light rain or drizzle falling. I had to have the electric light on for breakfast, and the Palace stables on the other side of the road were hardly visible. In the street below the taxis went past with a wet swish of mud and water on the wet wood blocks.

It was a long letter from a very happy girl, telling me about her love. I was delighted at the news, of course. I sat reading it with my breakfast before me, and then I read it through again, and then I read it a third time. When I woke up to realities my coffee was cold and the fried egg had frozen to the dish in front of me in cold, congealed fat, but I was too absorbed in her news to want it. I went into my bedroom to put my shoes and coat on for the office, and as I opened the wardrobe to get my coat I saw her boots and skates, that I had been keeping for her till she came back for them. Old men get rather silly, sometimes, and I must say that that rather dashed me for a moment, because she wouldn't be coming back for them. She wouldn't be coming back to England ever again.

I went to the front door, and my charwoman was in the flat, just coming out of the dining-room.“Such good news, Mrs Chambers,”I said.“Do you remember Miss Paget, who used to come here sometimes? She's got engaged to be married, to an Australian, out in Queensland.”

“Oh, I am glad,”she said.“Such a nice lady, she was.”

“Yes, wasn't she?”I repeated.“Such a nice lady.”

She said,“You didn't eat your breakfast, sir. Was everything all right?”

“Yes, quite all right, thanks, Mrs Chambers,”I said.“I didn't want anything this morning.”

It was cold and raw out in the street, one of those yellow foggy mornings with a reeking chill that makes you cough. I walked on towards the office in a dream, thinking about wallabies and laughing black stockmen, about blue water running over the white coral sands, about Jean Paget and the trouble she had had with her sarong in that hot country where all clothes are a burden. Then there was a fierce, rending squeal right on top of me, and a heavy blow on my right arm so that I staggered and nearly fell, and I was in the middle of Pall Mall with a taxi broadside on across the road beside me. I didn't know where I was for a moment, and then I heard the white-faced driver saying,“For Christ's sake. You can think yourself bloody lucky that you're still alive.”

“I'm sorry,”I said.“I wasn't looking where I was going.”

“Stepping out into the road like that,”he said angrily.“Ought to have more sense, at your age. Did I hit you?”

A little crowd was starting to collect.“Only my arm,”I said. I moved it, and it worked all right.“It's nothing.”

“Well, that's a bloody miracle,”he said.“Look out where you're going to next time.”He put his gear in, straightened up his taxi, and drove on; I walked on to the office.

The girl brought in the letters for me to go through, as usual, but I put them on one side in favour of another letter that I had in my breast pocket. I had a client or two that morning, I suppose; I usually have, and I suppose I gave them some advice, but my mind was twelve thousand miles away. Lester Robinson came in once with some business or other and I said to him,“You remember my Paget girl—the heir to that Macfadden estate? She's got herself engaged to be married to an Australian. He seems to be a very good chap.”

He grunted.“I forget. Does that terminate our trust?”

“No,”I said.“That goes on for some time to come. Till she's thirty-five.”

“Pity,”he said.“It's made a lot of work for you, that trust has. It'll be a good thing when it's all wound up.”

“It's been no trouble, really,”I said. By the end of the day I think I knew her letter by heart although it was eight quarto pages long, but I took it with me to the club. I had a glass of sherry in the bar and told Moore about her engagement because he knew something about her story, and after dinner we sat down to a couple of rubbers of bridge, Dennison and Strickland and Callaghan, the four of us who play together every evening, and I told them about her.

I got up from the table at about eleven o'clock, and went into the library for a final cigarette before going back across the park to my flat. The big room was empty but for Wright, who had been in the Malay Police and knew her story. I dropped down into a chair beside him, and remarked,“You know that girl, Jean Paget? I think I've spoken to you about her once or twice before.”

He smiled.“You have.”

“She's got herself engaged to be married,”I told him.“To the manager of a cattle station, in Northern Queensland.”

“Indeed?”he said.“What's he like?”

“I've met him,”I replied.“He's a very good chap. She's very much in love with him. I think they're going to be very happy.”

“Is she coming back to England before getting married?”he asked.

I sat staring at the rows of books upon the wall, the gold embossed carving at the corner of the ceiling.“No,”I said.“I don't think she's ever coming back to England, ever again.”

He was silent.

“It's too far,”I said.“I think she'll make her life in Queensland now.”

There was a long pause.“After all, there's no reason why she should come back to England,”I said at last.“There's nothing for her to come back for. She's got no ties in this country.”

And then he said a very foolish thing. He meant it well enough, but it was a stupid thing to say. I got up and left him and went home to my dark, empty flat, and I avoided meeting him for some time after that. I was seventy-three years old that autumn, old enough to be her grandfather. I couldn't possibly have been in love with her myself.